Daily Readings by Wild at Heart

It was in the depths of his personal tragedies that Job uttered the ruling sentence of his heart: “What I feared has come upon me” (3:25). In other words, “ I knew it! I knew I couldn’t really trust God—not with the things that matter most.” Job’s idol was control through religion and God was determined to save him from it. When the nits and dragons come, we ask God to remove them and when he does...

Life on the road requires recollection of our Love’s past deeds on our behalf and his promise of continued faithfulness to us. We will need courage and patience and those are strengthened by remembering. We will need memory, which is to say, we will need faith . 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...

It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger for them. (George Eliot) And I still haven't found what I'm looking for. (U2) There is a secret set within each of our hearts. It often goes unnoticed, we rarely can put words to it, and yet it guides us throughout the days of our lives. This sec...

Jesus is more impressed with the cunning of “the people of this world” than he is the naïveté so common to “the people of the light.” And then — back to the doves and snakes analogy — he urges us to be cunning: “I want you to be smart in the same way ... not complacently just get by on good behavior” (v. 9, The Message ). There’s a certain charm to a Forrest Gump naïveté, the kind your grandmother...

Look again at the story — when God gave us the earth, he gave us a mission . God blessed them:    “Prosper! Reproduce! Fill earth! Take charge!  Be responsible for fish in the sea and birds in the air,  for every living thing that moves on the face of the earth.”  Genesis 1:27, The Message   Notice the mission is a blessing , as anyone longing for a sense of purpose knows — give me something to do...

I shudder at how easily my heart can be divided. I do love God, I really do. I know you do too. The double-mindedness is revealed when we only sort of want God. Our longing for life to be good again becomes the test we hold up against God — if he seems to be helping, wonderful. We believe. If he doesn’t, well ... we’re going to chase whatever we think will fill our longing and get back to God some...

Abiding in the love of God is our only hope, the only true home for our hearts. It's not that we mentally acknowledge that God loves us. It's that we let our hearts come home to him, and stay in his love. MacDonald says it this way: When our hearts turn to him, that is opening the door to him ... then he comes in, not by our thought only, not in our idea only, but he comes himself, and of his own...

We do need more of God, much more. Little sips between long droughts will not sustain us. We need more of God in our bodies, our souls, our relationships, our work, everywhere in our lives. But when you live in a culture of the incessant upgrade of everything, the sensational, it gives the impression that if you’re going to have a deeper, richer, amazing experience of God, it’s going to have to co...

In our own times of severe testing, we want to be made “holy in every way,” our entire “spirit and soul and body ... kept blameless” (1 Thessalonians 5:23 NLT). Let me be quick to add, I think much of the testing and the Falling Away takes place very subtly in the heart. It’s the small turns from God toward our other comforters, the quiet feelings of being disappointed with him, the early stages o...

Do we form no friendships because our friends might be taken from us? Do we refuse to love because we may be hurt? Do we forsake our dreams because hope has been deferred? To desire is to open our hearts to the possibility of pain; to shut down our hearts is to die altogether. The full proverb reads this way: “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but when dreams come true, there is life and joy .”...

The most essential gift you have to give is yourself. When you aren’t entirely true about that, you aren’t true. But we’ve all grown accustomed to committing dozens of little white lies about ourselves every day. Except this man. He is Faithful and he is True. Having given this some thought, perhaps we are better prepared now to understand why God answered Moses the way he did when he spoke from t...

Who is this God who is so determined that we know His presence that He is willing to allow so much that hinders us to be stripped away, including at times our health and well-being? Where do my beliefs of what well-being actually is not align with my Father’s? It makes me wonder. It also fills me with wonder that our God is so determined, so cunning, so persevering, and so good that He will fight...

Ask Jesus to show you his kingdom. Sanctify your imagination to him, all your spiritual gifting, and ask him to reveal to you pictures of the coming kingdom. Be specific — if you want to see the city, ask to see the city. If you want to see those waterfalls, ask to see them. You will need to be open to being surprised; do not “script” what you think you “should” see. I dreamed of ships last night—...

When the religious (spirit) is operating, knowing about God substitutes for knowing God. And therefore, teaching is exalted. Church feels like a seminar — could be intellectual, could be motivational. Good content is what matters. Doctrine is fiercely defended. Members can explain to you theories of the atonement, or seven steps to success, but can’t name one intimate encounter they’ve had with Je...

Jesus ran because he wanted to, not simply because he had to or because the Father told him to. He ran "for the joy set before him," which means he ran out of desire . To use the familiar phrase, his heart was fully in it. We call the final week of our Savior's life his Passion Week. Look at the depth of his desire, the fire in his soul. Consumed with passion, he clears the temple of the charlatan...

The exodus of the people of Israel and their journey through the Sinai desert is one of the greatest survival stories of all time. More than two million people wandering through a land of sand and barren rock, homeless, looking for the land of abundance, a place to call home. When will life be good again? There were no real sources of food in that desert. Water was about as scarce as it is on the...

There is wisdom, and there is revelation. They go together, hand in hand. “I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better” (Ephesians 1:17). From the Spirit come both wisdom and revelation. We need them both to walk with God, need them in generous doses to navigate the dangerous waters of t...

You don't need to travel far to find beauty. God has strewn beauty across the globe in such generous portions we have only to stop and notice, paying particular attention to the intimate. Yes, epic beauty is worth traveling to see–the Himalaya, the Maasai Mara, Yosemite, any tropic island. But intimate beauty is just as healing, perhaps more so, and available everywhere. (I shared the St. Albans s...

The child who cries out in the dark feels very differently when mother comes in and switches on a light. What felt so real and inevitable vanishes. Let us be careful we don’t embrace the pain in such a way that we forbid God to turn on the light and draw near. Watch how David handles the stormy waters of his own soul: My tears have been my food      day and night,   while men say to me all day lon...

Emasculation happens in marriage as well. Women are often attracted to the wilder side of a man, but once having caught him they settle down to the task of domesticating him. Ironically, if he gives in he'll resent her for it, and she in turn will wonder where the passion has gone. Most marriages wind up there. A weary and lonely woman asked me the other day, "How do I get my husband to come alive...

During a long layover at O'Hare, I studied the man who sells popcorn from a little stand in one of the terminal hallways. He sat silently on a stool as thousands of people rushed by. Occasionally, every fifteen minutes or so, someone would stop and buy a bag. He would scoop the popcorn from the bin, take the money, and make change-all without a word being spoken between them. When the brief encoun...

The book “Killing Lions” is a conversation between John and Sam Eldredge about the trials young men face.     [Sam]   “We live in the age of information,” says the old recording of an announcer in my head; so why does finding direction feel like a parade of hopeless metaphors? I’m drinking from a fire hose and snorkeling through mud. I’ve been handed a spyglass and told it holds the key, only to g...

Lest we overlook the obvious, let me take a moment’s pause here to suggest that in your search for more of God, do remember to ask for it. Such a simple thought, but so helpful. Sometimes we get so caught up in the process we forget to ask. We have not because we ask not (James 4:2). Ask and you shall receive — that’s the promise (Matthew 7:7). So throughout my day, and over the course of a week,...

John Spillane is a para-rescue jumper sent into the North Atlantic, into the worst storm of the twentieth century, the perfect storm , as the book and film called it, to rescue a fisherman lost at sea. When his helicopter goes down, he is forced to jump into pitch blackness from an unknown height, and when he hits the water, he’s going so fast it’s like hitting the pavement from eighty feet above....

Let’s come back to Zacchaeus and the town harlot who crashed the party to weep at Jesus’ feet. They were, both of them, very keenly aware of their failures. They knew they had fallen way short of God’s goodness. And not only did they know it, but so did everyone else. So they bore the double weight of their own personal shame and the contempt of their communities. And yet, when they encountered Je...