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Daily Readings by Wild at Heart
Hosted by John Eldredge · EN
Daily Readings are a daily excerpt from books and teachings from John and Stasi Eldredge and Morgan Snyder.
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To Harden Our Hearts
1w ago00:01:45Tap to summarizeWhat makes the Day of Judgment so unnerving is that all our posing and all our charades will be pulled back, all secrets will be made known, and our Lord will "expose the motives of men's hearts" (1 Cor. 4:5, emphasis added).This is the point of the famous Sermon on the Mount. Jesus first says we haven't a hope of heaven unless our righteousness "surpasses that of the Pharisees" (Matt. 5:20). How can that be? They were fastidious rule keepers, pillars of the church, model citizens. Yes, Jesus says, and most of it was hypocrisy. The Pharisees prayed to impress men with their spirituality. They gave to impress men with their generosity. Their actions looked good, but their motives were not. Their hearts, as the saying goes, weren't in the right place. A person's character is determined by his motives, and motive is always a matter of the heart. This is what Scripture means when it says that man looks at the outward appearance, but God looks at the heart. God doesn't judge us by our looks or our intelligence; he judges us by our hearts.It makes sense, then, that Scripture also locates our conscience in our hearts. Paul says that even those who do not know God's law "show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness" (Rom. 2:15), such as when your child looks guilty for having told a lie. This is why it is so dangerous to harden our hearts by silencing our consciences, and why the offer of forgiveness is such good news, to have our "hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience" (Heb.10:22 NRSV). Oh, the joy of living from right motives, from a clean heart. I doubt that those who want to dismiss the heart want to dismiss our consciences, set aside the importance of character.Want more? Order your copy of Waking the Dead today
Transcribe →Neglecting Our Soul
2w ago00:02:52Tap to summarizeIt’s human nature to want our problems to simply go away. Be honest now — how many of us have heard a troubling tick, tick, tick or thump, thump, thump coming from the general direction of our car’s engine or transmission and not done a thing about it, hoping it would just go away? We do this with our health all the time — that painful little hitch, the lump, the troubling indigestion, those few extra pounds cry for our attention, but we let it pass for months or even years, hoping it will magically sort itself out.How much more our souls. In this busy, mad, distracted world, it’s just too easy (and far more efficient) to send your soul to the back of the bus. Low priority. Maybe later. But you, my reader, have read this far, and I'm so proud of you! You’re making the hard choices that will bear fruit for years and years to come.So ... next step. Let’s talk about neglected places in your soul.I’m beginning the conversation with neglected loss, disappointment, and grief not because these are the main issues in any person’s life, but because these are the things we tend to run from. Of course we do. We run from pain, run back to our normal lives, try to pretend we aren’t bereaved, bereft, whatever the loss may be. Problem is, we are running from huge tracts of our own soul, leaving them behind, and then we can’t find more of God because we are looking with so little of our own soul.It takes more of you to find more of God.We often can’t find the more of God we long for, because we are looking with so little of ourselves. Too much of us has been left behind. Just as the assault on our attention keeps pushing us into the shallows, so that we no longer hear deep calling unto deep, the pace of life rushes us past significant moments of disappointment and loss, and in doing so continues the “shallowfication” of our souls. We are like eroded stream banks, a little more shaved off every year. Or like the lonesome hero in “Desperado,” who was losing all his “highs and lows” as his feelings simply went away.So this is a good place to push back. We may have neglected our soul’s need for beauty. We may have neglected our soul’s need for play. But I have reason to believe that unattended loss is a good place to start if you would recover and heal the vessel God wants to fill, if you would open up room in your life for him to meet you there. Want more? Order your copy of Get Your Life Back today
Transcribe →Failure is Ripe with Goodness
3w ago00:01:25Tap to summarizeGod drops things in our laps at just the right time. He puts barriers in our paths that look like roadblocks but are really gifts in disguise, beckoning us to take a closer look at what’s going on inside of us. We can either step over them or choose to pick them up and examine them for the potential they may hold. Failure is ripe with goodness. The longing to run away or escape our lives for any greener grass is the opportunity to seek God in the midst of it, to learn something deeper about both us and Him. Exhaustion and sadness often hold the door open for a more restful and joyful life. If we will let it, the door opens to remind us of the person we wanted to be but have left behind in the chaos and disappointments of life. When the sadness refuses to be silenced and the feelings arise that this is not the life we had signed up for, we can either go to shame or to God. Is it a sin to want to be happy? Is it wrong to want to know an inner restfulness that is not subject to the whims and torrents of a life that refuses to slow down? I don’t think so. God does not think so either. We are made for bliss. We are made for inner peace. If it were not so, why would all humanity throughout history seek it with such a driven and often frenetic passion? Want more? Order your copy of Defiant Joy today
Transcribe →The Stream of Healing
3w ago00:01:19Tap to summarizeFor this people's heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them. (Matt. 13:15)"And I would heal them." That's a different offer from: "And I would forgive them." It's a different offer from: "And I will give them a place in heaven." No, Jesus is offering healing to us. Look at what he does to people who are broken. How does he handle them? The blind are able to see like a hawk. The deaf are able to hear a pin drop. The lame do hurdles. The corroding skin of the leper is cleansed and made new. The woman with the issue of blood stops hemorrhaging. The paralyzed servant hops out of bed. They are, every last one of them, healed. Now follow this closely: everything Jesus did was to illustrate what he was trying to say. Here — look at this — this is what I'm offering to do for you. Not just for your body, but more important, for your soul. I can heal your heart. I can restore your soul. Want more? Order your copy of Waking the Dead today
Transcribe →Dignity of Causation
3w ago00:01:44Tap to summarizeOne of the most crippling convictions held by believers today is the idea that everything that happens is the will of God. It is a poisonous belief that will destroy your confidence in God; you will end up believing terrible things about him. The news report about a pack of teenage boys who repeatedly raped a little girl with Down’s syndrome. That is the will of God??? Listen very carefully. The Bible makes it perfectly clear that God never causes anyone to sin: “When tempted, no one should say, ‘God is tempting me.’ For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; but each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death. Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers” (James 1:13–16). God does not tempt, nor does he cause you to sin. But people sin every day, and their sins have devastating consequences. So there are all kinds of events happening every day that are not caused by God. Remember — we live in a world where God has granted to human beings and to angels the dignity of causation, the dignity of making things happen. You get to make things happen, just as God does. God did not cause Adam and Eve to sin, nor did he prevent them from doing so. And their sin had staggering consequences. Want more? Order your copy of Moving Mountains today
Transcribe →Vanity Fair
4w ago00:03:17Tap to summarize"Don't be afraid of embracing the disappointment you feel, old or new. Don't be scared of the unreasonable joy either. They're the highway markers home."We snort with disdain at such quaint sentiments, and our choice made, strike off down the straight highway of discipline and duty. All goes well for a while, sometimes for years, until we begin to realize that we're really not feeling much anymore. We find ourselves struggling to weep with those who weep or even rejoice with those who rejoice. Mostly we don't bother looking people in the eye. They may want to engage us and nothing much inside feels very engaged. Our passions begin to show up in inappropriate fantasies and longings interspersed with depression, anxieties, and anger we thought we had left behind. With a start, we realize our heart has stolen away in the baggage. It is taking the journey with us but under protest.We redouble our efforts at discipline to get it to knuckle under but it refuses. Some of us finally kill it well enough that it no longer speaks as long as we're occupied. Any quasi-redemptive busyness will do. We look as if we're still believing. Others of us decide the deadness is too high a price to pay and agree to let our heart have a secret life on the side. We even try to be passionate about our faith but the fiery embers that once sustained it have turned to cool gray ash, the evidence that life was indeed once present.We find ourselves at the same place of heart resignation we left so many years ago before we were Christians. We arrive at the Vanity Fair that John Bunyan describes in The Pilgrim's Progress. It is a familiar city populated with many of the companions we had hoped to leave behind: deadness of spirit, lack of loving-kindness, lust, pride, anger, and others. Nonetheless, having been out on the Christian journey for a number of years by now, we assume that this is as close to the Celestial City as we're ever going to get. We set up housekeeping and entertain ourselves as well as possible at the booths in the Fair that sell a variety of soul curiosities, games, and anesthetics.The curiosities sold at the fair are endless in their diversity, many of them good in and of themselves: Bible study, community service, religious seminars, hobbies we try to convince ourselves are eternally transcendent (e.g., "Wow, I can't wait to ski deep powder!"), service to our church, going out to dinner. But we find ourselves doing them more and more to quiet the heart voice that tells us we have given up what is most important to us.Want more? Order your copy of The Sacred Romance today
Transcribe →Famished Craving
4w ago00:03:03Tap to summarizeSomething is happening to the human heart. You need to understand what it is if you would make sense of any of this. Human beings are by nature ravenous creatures; a famished craving haunts every one of us. We were created for utter happiness, joy, and life. But ever since we lost Eden, we have never known a day of total fullness; we are never filled in any lasting way. People are like cut flowers—we appear to be well, but we are severed from the vine. We are desperate, lustful creatures. We look to a marriage (or the hope of marriage), a child, our work, food, sex, alcohol, adventure, the next dinner out, the new car — anything to touch the ache inside us. We are ravenous beings. And we have been untethered. Every institution that once provided psychological and moral stability is crumbling—families, communities, church allegiances. We don’t trust anyone or anything anymore; not our universities nor financial institutions, not religious hierarchies, and certainly not our political leaders. The breakdown adds a kind of unchecked desperation to our ravenous hunger. Then the world stands in the way of our famished craving; it constantly thwarts us. People don’t treat us as we long to be treated; we can’t find the happiness we need. Our boss is harsh, so we sabotage him. Our spouse withholds sex, so we indulge online. The ravening won’t be stopped. But boy, oh boy — when somebody gets in the way of our desperate hunger, they feel the fury of our rage. We are ready to kill. People shoot each other over traffic incidents. Parents abuse a baby who keeps them up at night. We vengefully crucify one another in social media. This is our current condition — ravenous, psychologically untethered, increasingly desperate, ready to harm anything that gets in our way. And there appears to be nothing to stop the slide into chaos. “The falcon cannot hear the falconer,” warned the poet W. B. Yeats in “The Second Coming”: Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. Whatever else is at play here, we have clearly lost hope. We have no confident expectation that goodness is coming to us. When my friend said, “We could sure use some hope right now,” she may have prophesied the final word over the human race.Want more? Order your copy of All Things New today
Transcribe →A Place Prepared for You
4w ago00:01:04Tap to summarizeThere is the joy of having someone save a place for us. We walk into a crowded room at church or at a dinner party and someone across the way waves us over, pointing to a chair he's held on to especially for us. For a moment we feel a sense of relief, a taste of being on the inside. Now consider Jesus' words in John 14:2 — "I am going...to prepare a place for you." Christ promises that he is saving a place in heaven especially for each of us. When we walk into the crowded excitement of the wedding feast of the Lamb, with the sound of a thousand conversations, laughter and music, the clinking of glasses, and one more time our heart leaps with the hope that we might be let into the sacred circle, we will not be disappointed. We'll be welcomed to the table by our Lover himself. No one will have to scramble to find another chair, to make room for us at the end of the table, or rustle up a place setting. There will be a seat with our name on it, held open at Jesus' command for us and no other. Want more? Order your copy of The Sacred Romance today
Transcribe →What Is Your Role in the Story?
4w ago00:03:06Tap to summarizeNow — what is your part? What is your role in the Story? In truth, the only one who can tell you that is the Author. To find our lives, we must turn to Jesus. We must yield our all to him and ask him to restore us as his own. We ask his forgiveness for our betrayal of him. We ask him to make us all he intended us to be — to tell us who we are and what we are now to do. We ask him to remove the veil from our eyes and from our hearts.The Story God is telling — like every great story that echoes it — reminds us of three eternal truths it would be good to keep in mind as we take the next step out the door.First, things are not what they seem.Where would we be if Eve had recognized the serpent for who he really was? And that carpenter from Nazareth — he’s not what he appears to be, either. There is far more going on around us than meets the eye. We live in a world with two halves, one part that we can see and another part that we cannot. We must live as though the unseen world (the rest of reality) is more weighty and more real and more dangerous than the part of reality we can see.Second, we are at war.This is a love Story, set in the midst of a life-and-death battle. Just look around you. Look at all the casualties strewn across the field. The lost souls, the broken hearts, the captives. We must take this battle seriously.Third, you have a crucial role to play.That is the third eternal truth spoken by every great story, and it happens to be the one we most desperately need if we are ever to understand our days. Frodo underestimated who he was. As did Neo. As did Wallace. As did Peter, James, and John. It is a dangerous thing to underestimate your role in the Story. You will lose heart, and you will miss your cues.This is our most desperate hour. You are needed. Want more? Order your copy of Epic today
Transcribe →Your Heart Matters
4w ago00:02:03Tap to summarizeThe devil has more temptations than an actor has costumes for the stage. And one of his all-time favorite disguises is that of a lying spirit, to abuse your tender heart with the worst news he can deliver — that you do not really love Jesus Christ and that you are only pretending, you are only deceiving yourself. (William Gurnall)Satan is called in Scripture the Father of Lies (John 8:44). His very first attack against the human race was to lie to Eve and Adam about God, and where life is to be found, and what the consequences of certain actions would and would not be. He is a master at this. He suggests to us— as he suggested to Adam and Eve — some sort of idea or inclination or impression, and what he is seeking is a sort of "agreement" on our part. He's hoping we'll buy into whatever he's saying, offering, insinuating. Our first parents bought into it, and look what disaster came of it. The Evil One is still lying to us, seeking our agreement every single day.Your heart is good. Your heart matters to God. Those are the two hardest things to hang on to. I'm serious — try it. Try to hold this up for even a day. My heart is good. My heart matters to God. You will be amazed at how much accusation you live under. You have an argument with your daughter on the way to school; as you drive off, you have a nagging sense of, Well, you really blew that one. If your heart agrees — Yeah, I really did — without taking the issue to Jesus, then the Enemy will try to go for more. You're always blowing it with her. Another agreement is made. It's true. I'm such a lousy parent. Keep this up and your whole day is tanked in about five minutes. The Enemy will take any small victory he can get. It moves from You did a bad thing to You are bad. After a while it just becomes a cloud we live under, accept as normal. Want more? Order your copy of Waking the Dead today
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