Daily Readings by Wild at Heart

Over the years we’ve come to see that the only thing more tragic than the things that have happened to us is what we have done with them.Words were said, painful words. Things were done, awful things. And they shaped us. Something inside of us shifted. We embraced the messages of our wounds. We accepted a twisted view of ourselves. And from that we chose a way of relating to our world. We made a vow never to be in that place again. We adopted strategies to protect ourselves from being hurt again. A woman who is living out of a broken, wounded heart is a woman who is living a self-protective life. She may not be aware of it, but it is true. It’s our way of trying to “save ourselves.”We also developed ways of trying to get something of the love our hearts cried out for. The ache is there. Despite the best face we put on our lives, the ache is there. As Proverbs says, “Even in laughter the heart may ache” (14:13). Our desperate need for love and affirmation, our thirst for some taste of romance and adventure and beauty is there. So we turned to boys or to food or to romance novels; we lost ourselves in our work or at church or in some sort of service. All this adds up to the women we are today. Much of what we call our “personalities” is actually the mosaic of our choices for self-protection plus our plan to get something of the love we were created for.The problem is our plan has nothing to do with God.The wounds we received and the messages they brought formed a sort of unholy alliance with our fallen nature as women. From Eve we received a deep mistrust in the heart of God toward us. Clearly, he’s holding out on us. We’ll just have to arrange for the life we want. We will control our world. But there is also an ache deep within, an ache for intimacy and for life. We’ll have to find a way to fill it. A way that does not require us to trust anyone, especially God. A way that will not require vulnerability.Want more? Order your copy of Captivating today.

According to the part of the story God has allowed us to see, the Haunting we sense is his calling us forth on a journey. The resurrection of our heart requires that the Sacred Romance be true and that is precisely what the Scriptures tell us. As Frederick Buechner reminds us in his wonderful book Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy and Fairy Tale, the world of the gospel is the world of fairy tale, with one notable exception:It is a world of magic and mystery, of deep darkness and flickering starlight. It is a world where terrible things happen and wonderful things too. It is a world where goodness is pitted against evil, love against hate, order against chaos, in a great struggle where often it is hard to be sure who belongs to which side because appearances are endlessly deceptive. Yet for all its confusion and wildness, it is a world where the battle goes ultimately to the good, who live happily ever after, and where in the long run everybody, good and evil alike, becomes known by his true name . . . That is the fairy tale of the Gospel with, of course, one crucial difference from all other fairy tales, which is that the claim made for it is that it is true, that it not only happened once upon a time but has kept on happening ever since and is happening still.Let us explore together the drama that God has been weaving since before the beginning of time, which he has also placed in our hearts. Who are the main players in this Larger Story? What is the plot? How do we fit in? As we rediscover the oldest Story in the world, one that is forever young, we journey into the heart of God and toward the recovery of our own hearts. For perhaps God would be reason enough to stay open to the Romance if we knew he would keep us safe. And therein we experience a great fear and confusion.Want more? Order your copy of The Sacred Romance today.

Camels have an Achilles’ heel. But their vulnerability is hidden by their legendary resilience: these famous “ships of the desert” have been crossing dune seas since before the time of Abraham. The stamina and strength of camels is truly impressive — they can carry heavy loads across leagues of burning desert sand, going without water for weeks while their human companions die of thirst. But the treacherous thing about camels is that they will walk a thousand miles with seemingly endless endurance, giving you little indication they are about to collapse. Then it just happens. As the Alchemist said to Santiago, Camels are traitorous: they walk thousands of paces and never seem to tire. Then suddenly, they kneel and die. But horses tire bit by bit. You always know how much you can ask of them, and when it is that they are about to die. (The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho)Human souls hide an Achilles’ heel too. We have an astonishing capacity to rally in the face of calamity and duress. We rally and rally, and then one day we discover there’s nothing left. Our soul simply says, I’m done; I don’t want to do this anymore, as we collapse into discouragement, depression, or just blankness of soul. You don’t want to push your soul to that point. Right now we’re in a sort of global denial about the actual cost of these hard years (which are not over). We just want to get past it all, so we’re currently trying to comfort ourselves with some sense of recovery and relief. But folks, we haven’t yet paid the psychological bill for all we’ve been through. We would never tell a survivor of abuse that the trauma must be over now that the abuse has stopped. And yet that mentality is at play in our collective denial of the trauma we’ve been through. We need to be kinder to our souls than that. Denial heals nothing, which is why I’m more concerned about what’s coming than what lies behind. In our compromised condition we’re now facing some of the trials Jesus warned us about as we approach what the Scriptures refer to as “the end of the age” (Matthew 24:3). Extraordinary times can be thrilling, but they also tend to be very demanding. Our hearts will need guidance and preparation. It would be a good idea to take the strength of your soul seriously at this time. There is hope, great hope. Jesus Christ knew that humanity would face hard times, especially as history accelerates toward the end of the age. He gave us counsel on how to live through such trials, and now would be a good time to pay attention to what he said. The Creator and Redeemer of our humanity has given us a path toward recovery and resilience. We would be fools to ignore it or push it off to “some other time.” Whatever you believe about the coming years, I think we can all agree that greater resilience of heart and soul would be a very good thing to take hold of. Want more? Order your copy of Resilient today.

You may recall the story Jesus told of the man who entrusted three of his servants with thousands of dollars (literally, “talents”), urging them to handle his affairs well while he was away. When he returned, he listened eagerly to their reports. The first two fellows went out into the marketplace and doubled their investment. As a result, they were handsomely rewarded. The third servant was not so fortunate. His gold was taken from him, and he was thrown into “outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” My goodness. Why? All he did was bury the money under the porch until his master’s return. Most of us would probably agree with the path he chose—at least the money was safe there. But listen to his reasoning. Speaking to his master, he said, “I know you are a hard man, harvesting crops you didn’t plant and gathering crops you didn’t cultivate. I was afraid I would lose your money, so I hid it” (see Matthew 25:14–30 NLT). He was afraid of the master, whom he saw as a hard man. He didn’t trust his master’s heart. The issue isn’t capital gains—it’s what we think of God. When we bury our desires, we are saying the same thing: “God, I don’t dare desire because I fear you; I think you are hard-hearted.”Even though we may profess at one level a genuine faith in him, at another level we are like the third servant. Our obedience is not so much out of love as it is out of carefulness. “Just tell me what to do, God, and I’ll do it.” Killing desire may look like sanctification, but it’s really godlessness. Literally, our way of handling life without God. The deepest moral issue is always what we, in our heart of hearts, believe about God. And nothing reveals this belief as clearly as what we do with our desire. Want more? Order your copy of The Journey of Desire today.

Many awful things have been done with the doctrine of hell. “You’ll go to hell for that” has been used to condemn all sorts of things that God does not condemn. You know… “Don’t smoke, don’t chew, don’t go with girls who do.” Furthermore, those who have swung the idea of hell around like a club give you the impression that they’ll be glad to see you sent there. But not our God, who “is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). The Lover of our souls, the One who has pursued us down through space and time, who gave his own life to rescue us from the Kingdom of Darkness, has made it clear: He does not want to lose us. He longs for us to be with him forever.Nonetheless, simply because certain people have abused the concept of hell doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.First, you must understand that hell was created not for mankind, but for Satan and his angels (Matthew 25:41). I’m sure you’ll remember with relish the stories where the evil one is destroyed in the end. Commodus being slain with his own knife in the arena. Darth Maul falling to the saber of Obi-Wan Kenobi. A great chasm opening in the earth to swallow Sauron and his army of Orcs so that Middle Earth might be free at last.Hell is not God’s intention for mankind.But remember—he gave us free will.He gave us a choice.We seem to forget—perhaps more truthfully, we refuse to remember—that we are the ones who betrayed him, not vice versa. We are the ones who listened to the lies of the Evil One in the Garden; we chose to mistrust the heart of God. In breaking the one command he gave us, we set in motion a life of breaking his commands. The final act of self-centeredness is seen in those who refuse to come to the wedding banquet of God (Matthew 22:2–3). They do not want God. They reject his offer of forgiveness and reconciliation through Jesus. What is he to do? The universe has only two options. If they insist, God will grant to them what they have wanted—to be left to themselves. Want more? Order your copy of Epic today.

There’s a passage in the book of Hebrews we don’t like very much.“Although he was a son”—it is speaking about Jesus Christ–“he learned obedience from what he suffered” (5:8).Dang. If Jesus needed to learn through suffering, well, it just doesn’t leave any room for complaining, does it? How are we going to skip this class if he had to take it? Suffering will be a part of our education as God’s children.This is NOT to say that every bad thing that comes your way is God’s discipline. It does not mean that marital crisis is some sort of retribution for past sins. That is bad theology and it has hurt a lot of people. A friend was suffering from a terrible flu; she said, “I sure hope I learn what God has for me in this, so I can get over it.” I didn’t want to be unkind, so I kept my mouth shut. But inside I thought, You think God made you sick!? There are others things at work in this world. Germs, for instance.We live in a broken world; disease, accident, injury are just part of life east of Eden. This world has foul spirits in it, too; they cause a lot of havoc. The sin of man is also enough to sink any ship. Stir all these together and you got plenty of reason for suffering. So don’t go thinking that every bad things happening is God punishing you.As Dallas Willard reminds us, “What we learn about God from Jesus should prove to us that suffering and ‘bad things’ happening to us are not the Father’s preferred way of dealing with us—sometimes necessary, perhaps, but never what he would, on the whole, prefer.” Not his preferred means—keep that in mind.Want more? Order your copy of Love & War today.

The book "Killing Lions" is a conversation between John and Sam Eldredge about the trials young men face.Almost all initiation rituals handed down for centuries involved physical trials for young men. After finishing their training in a secret valley, the young warriors of Kauai had to swim home—miles in the open ocean. Sioux braves spent nights out on a mountain alone. For centuries the Maasai killed lions. Our elders knew that men learn by doing. It is one thing to be told you possess a genuine strength but another thing altogether to discover for yourself that you do. This is why hard work is so important for young men. If your friend could see his work in “hell” not as failure, not as a prison sentence, but as his lion to slay, he could come at it with a whole new perspective. Even if he only sticks it out another six months, he can walk away with blood on his hands and the sense of “I did that. I won. I can handle it.” Our starting place is to ask God what he thinks of us, to allow our Father to speak to us as sons. Then from there we begin to get active in the process of seeking and receiving identity and validation. God always treats a man like a man; he honors our involvement, invites our participation. Get active in the process: Where do you feel weak? Where do you need some shoring up? “Killing lions” is all about finding validation through genuine victories fought out of our true heart, from which we emerge with a genuine strength and sense of self. When you know you have accomplished that, it settles some important questions deep inside and allows you to move into your world with courage. The most fearsome lions will be the ones that roar with the sound of our historic shame, trying to cower us back into the false self, back to the script we were handed not by God but by The World (and ultimately by the evil one). Want more? Order your copy of Killing Lions today.

Christians have been told over and over that God is almighty. And indeed he is—the God of four hundred billion billion suns. We have been told he is also sovereign. And indeed he is. Perhaps out of respect, we have adopted the notion that if he is going to act, he is going to act quickly. Bam. Zap. (If we are honest, I think we adopted that perspective because it also relieves us of strenuous prayer.) But is this what we see in so many of these biblical accounts?Clearly, God does not just zap Peter out of prison. The church has to pray “strenuously” for him; the event goes on into the night. He does not zap the promised rain either—Elijah had to climb to the top of the mountain, and there he prayed eight rounds of intervening prayer. God did send the angel to Daniel the first day he prayed—but it took three weeks for him to break through. God didn’t just zap Joseph, Mary, and the child Jesus down into safety in Egypt—an angel had to come to them as well; they had to flee in the night.Are you getting the picture? Prayer is not just asking God to do something and waiting for him to zap it.Intervening prayer often takes time.And it takes repetition, repeatedly intervening and invoking. (Eight rounds for Elijah).Want more? Order your copy of Moving Mountains today.