When winter fails to provide an adequate snow base, my boys bring their sleds in the house and ride them down the stairs. Just the other day, my wife found them with a rope out their second-story bedroom window, preparing to rappel down the side of the house. The recipe for fun is pretty simple raising boys: Add to any activity an element of danger, stir in a little exploration, add a dash of destruction, and you've got yourself a winner.
Worship is the act of the abandoned heart adoring its God
A man's calling is written on his true heart, and he discovers it when he enters the frontier of his deep desires.
You can't fight a battle you don't think exists.
My heart matters to God. My heart has always mattered to him.
Instead of asking, 'What should a woman do—what is her role?' it would be far more helpful to ask, 'What is a woman—what is her design?' and, 'Why did God place Woman in our midst?
So long as man remains no real threat to the Enemy, Satan's line to him is 'You're fine'. But after you do take sides, it becomes 'Your heart is bad and you know it'.
A man needs a much bigger orbit than a woman. He needs a mission, a life purpose, and he needs to know his name. Only then is he fit for a woman, for only then does he have something to invite her into.
somehow we have overlooked the fact this treasured called the heart can also be broken, has been broken, and now lies in pieces down under the surface. When it comes to habits we cannot quit or patterns we cannot stop, anger that flies out of nowhere, fears we cannot overcome, or weaknesses we hate to admit--much of what troubles us comes out of the broken places in our hearts crying out for relief. Jesus speaks as if we are all brokenhearted. We would do well to trust His perspective on this.
If a man is ever to find out who he is and what he is here for, he has got to take that journey for himself. He has got to get his heart back.
Deep in his heart, every man longs for a battle to fight, an adventure to live, and a beauty to rescue.
For after years of living in a cage, a lion no longer even believes it is a lion . . . and a man no longer believes he is a man.
I'm married. I have three children. I have a mortgage to pay. The plumbing breaks and the yard needs trimming. However, what my wife and children need most from me is my passion for them.
We are made in the image of God; we carry within us the desire for our true life of intimacy and adventure. To say we want less than that is to lie.
You live in a world at war. Spiritual attack must be a category you think in or you will misunderstand more than half of what happens in your marriage.
We think you'll find that every woman in her heart of hearts longs for three things: to be romanced, to play an irreplaceable role in a great adventure, and to unveil beauty. That's what makes a woman come alive.
He is the playfulness of creation, scandal and utter goodness, the generosity of the ocean and the ferocity of a thunderstorm; he is cunning as a snake and gentle as a whisper; the gladness of sunshine and the humility of a thirty-mile walk by foot on a dirt road.
Story is the language of the heart.
We are created for adventure, and if we cannot find one, we start blowing things out of proportion so it feels like we have one.
Desire reveals design, and design reveals destiny.
What strikes me about Jesus is that he is a remarkably true person; he never changes his personality to fit in with whatever crowd he finds himself. He is simply himself, and he never plays to his audience.
Truth be told, most of us are faking our way through life. We pick only those battles we are sure to win, only those adventures we are sure to handle, only those beauties we are sure to rescue.
Adventure, with all its requisite danger and wildness, is a deeply spiritual longing written into the soul of man.
Don't climb on that, don't break anything, don't be so aggressive, don't be so noisy, don't be so messy, don't make such crazy risks. But God's design - which He placed in boys as the picture of Himself - is a resounding yes. Be fierce, be wild, be passionate.
Christianity has basically communicated to men that the reason God put you on this Earth is to be a good boy. Mind your manners, be a nice guy. That's soul killing!
The real you is on the side of God against the false self
It was men who stopped slavery. It was men who ran up the stairs in the Twin Towers to rescue people. It was men who gave up their seats on the lifeboats of the Titanic. Men are made to take risks and live passionately on behalf of others.
A true knowledge of Jesus is our greatest need and our greatest happiness.
The point is the love story. We live in a love story in the midst of war.
We are not inviting—we are guarded. Most of our energy is spent trying to hide our true selves, and control our worlds to have some sense of security.
Most Christians are still living with an Old Testament view of their heart. Jeremiah 17:9 says, 'My heart is deceitfully wicked.' No, it's not. Not after the work of Christ, because the promise of the new covenant is a new heart.
Of course, none of this can happen for us until we give our lives back to God. We cannot know the joy or the life or the freedom of heart I've described until we surrender our lives to Jesus and surrender them totally... We turn, and give ourselves body, soul, and spirit back to God, asking him to cleanse our hearts and make them new. And he does. He gives us a new heart. And he comes to dwell there, in our hearts.
The true story of every person in this world is not the story you see, the external story. The true story of each person is the journey of his or her heart.
You would not ask someone with a broken arm to swim the English Channel, so you cannot demand that the broken to live as if they were whole.
Without the anticipation of better things ahead, we will have no heart for the journey.
To find God, you must look with all your heart. To remain present to God, you must remain present to your heart. To hear his voice, you must listen with all your heart. To love him, you must love with all your heart. You cannot be the person God meant you to be, and you cannot live the life he meant you to live, unless you live from the heart.
I wasn't mean; I wasn't evil. I was nice. And let me tell you, a hesitant man is the last thing in the world a woman needs. She needs a lover and a warrior, not a Really Nice Guy.
I don't write anything that I haven't lived. In terms of integrity, you have to write what you live. And if you write beyond what you live, it is theory. And theory is not helpful. It is just not.
We abandon the most important journey of our lives when we abandon desire. We leave our hearts by the side of the road and head off in the direction of fitting in, getting by, being productive, what have you. Whatever we might gain – money, position, the approval of others, or just absence of the discontent self – it’s not worth it.
Moses does not encounter the living God at the mall. He finds Him (or is found by Him) somewhere out in the deserts of Sinai, a long way from the comforts of Egypt... Where did the great prophet Elijah go to recover his strength? To the wild. As did John the Baptist, and his cousin, Jesus, Who is led by the Spirit into the wilderness.
Every boy, in his journey to become a man, takes an arrow in the center of his heart, in the place of his strength. Because the wound is rarely discussed and even more rarely healed, every man carries a wound. And the wound is nearly always given by his father.
When a woman forsakes her vulnerability because she's been hurt or because she lives in a dangerous world or doesn't want to be used, she loses something essential about being a woman.
To be in theater you have to be a kind of psychologist, for you're always trying to understand character and motives.
She is the crescendo, the final, astonishing work of God. Woman. In one last flourish creation comes to a finish with Eve. She is the Master's finishing touch.
Eve is a life giver; she is Adam's ally. It is to both of them that the charter for adventure is given. It will take both of them to sustain life. And they will both need to fight together.
It takes great courage to be vulnerable. It takes enormous strength to be a real woman.
An intimate encounter with Jesus is the most transforming experience of human existence. To know him as he is, is to come home. To have his life, joy, love, and presence cannot be compared. A true knowledge of Jesus is our greatest need and our greatest happiness.
A wound that goes unacknowledged and unwept is a wound that cannot heal.
Eternal life is not primarily duration but quality of life, "life to the limit.
The most dangerous man on earth is the man who has reckoned with his own death. All men die; few men ever really live.
Falling in love with God is the most important thing a person can do.
Have you thought about His (God) handling of the gospel? God needs to get a message out to the human race, without which they will perish...foreve r. What's the plan? First, He starts with the most unlikely group ever: a couple of prostitutes, a few fishermen with no better than a second-grade education, a tax collector. Then, he passes the ball to us. Unbelievable.
Reading the Gospels, without the personality of Jesus, is like watching television with the sound turned off.
Only by walking with God can we hope to find the path that leads to life. That is what it means to be a disciple. After all -- aren't we 'followers of Christ'? Then by all means, let's actually follow him. Not ideas about him. Not just his principles. Him.
Aggression is part of the masculine design, we are hardwired for it.... Little girls do not invent games where large numbers of people die, where bloodshed is a prerequisite for having fun. Hockey, for example, was not a feminine creation. Nor was boxing. A boy wants to attack something - and so does a man, even if it's only a little white ball on a tee.
Every man carries a wound. I have never met a man without one. No matter how good your life may have seemed to you, you live in a broken world full of broken people.
There is something else I am after, out here in the wild. I am searching for an even more elusive prey . . . something that can only be found through the help of wilderness. I am looking for my heart.
How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone and narrow to be everything to someone? No, a woman’s function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute. (What’s Wrong with the World)
The meaning of our lives is revealed through experiences that at first seem at odds with each other--moments we wish would never end and moments we wish had never begun.
It is the thoughts and intents of the heart that shape a person's life.
Security is not found in the absence of danger, but in the presence of Jesus.
If only Jesus' followers shared his personality. That one shift alone would correct so many of the ridiculous and horrifying things that pass for popular Christianity.
A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut his way out, needs to combine a strong desire for living with a strange carelessness about dying. He must not merely cling to life, for then he will be a coward, and will not escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide, and will not escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it; he must desire life like water and yet drink death like wine.
You probably can't imagine there being a glory in your life, let alone one that the Enemy fears. But remember - things are not what they seem. We are not what we seem. You probably believed that your heart was bad too. I pray that fog of poison gas from the pit of hell is fading away in the wind of God's truth. And there is more. Not only does Christ say to you that your heart is good, he invites you now out of the shadows to unveil your glory. You have a role you never dreamed of having.
We don't live in the Garden. We live far from Eden. Every life is full of heartaches. Every life, frankly, is unspeakably sad.
They ignore what is deep and true to a man's heart, his real passions, and simply try to shape him up through various forms of pressure.
Caring for our own hearts isn't selfishness; it's how we begin to love.
But a wound unfelt is a wound unhealed.
The story of your life is the story of the long and brutal assault on your heart by the one who knows what you could be and fears it.
Most of what you encounter when you meet a man is a facade, an elaborate fig leaf, a brilliant disguise.
Contentment can only happen as we increase desire, let it run itself out towar its fulfilment, and carry us along with it.
The heart is God's most magnificent creation, and the prize over which he fights the kingdom of darkness. Now consider this - marriage is the sanctuary of the heart. You have been entrusted with the heart of another human being. Whatever else your life's great mission will entail, loving and defending this heart next to you is part of your great quest.
Most of us live in a fog. It's like life is a movie we arrived to 20 minutes late. You know something important seems to be going on. But we can't figure out the story. We don't know what part we're supposed to play or what the plot is.
Desire, both the whispers and the shouts, is the map we have been given to find the only life worth living.
We have no idea who we really are. Whatever glory bestowed, whatever glory is being restored, we thought the whole Christian thing was about... something else. Trying not to sin. Going to church. Being nice. Jesus says it is about healing your heart, setting it free, restoring your glory. A religious fog has tried to veil all that, put us under some sort of spell or amnesia, to keeup us from coming alive.
The culture of women in the church today is crippled by some very pervasive lies. "To be spiritual is to be busy. To be spiritual is to be disciplined. To be spiritual is to be dutiful." No, to be spiritual is to be in Romance with God. The desire to be romanced lies deep in the heart of every women. It is for such that you were made. Are you ARE romanced, and ever will be.
Henri Nouwen once asked Mother Teresa for spiritual direction. Spend one hour each day in adoration of your Lord, she said, and never do anything you know is wrong. Follow this and you'll be fine.
A man does not go to a woman to get his strength; he goes to her to offer it.
Faith looks back and draws courage; hope looks ahead, and keeps desire alive.
Am I really a man? Have I got what it takeswhen it counts?
Every man is a warrior inside. But the choice to fight is his own.
God endowed you with a glory when he created you, a glory so deep and mythic that all creation pales in comparison.
A man must have a battle to fight, a great mission to his life that involves and yet transcends even home and family.
There is something about human nature that just doesn't want to face the reality that we live in two worlds. We live in the physical, material world where we have jobs, read books, and go about our business. And we live in a spiritual world - and that is a world at war.
Caring for your heart is also how you protect your relationship with God... [The heart] is where we commune with him. It is where we hear his voice. Most of the folks I know who have never heard God speak to them are the same folks who live far from their hearts.
Mary had Joseph. Esther had Mordecai. Ruth had Boaz. We will not become the women God intends us to be without the guidance, counsel, wisdom, strength, and love of good men in our lives.
We don't see clearly because we don't see with the eyes of our heart.
If we can reawaken that fierce quality in a man, hook it up to a higher purpose, release the warrior within, then the boy can grow up and become truly masculine.
In the end, it doesn’t matter how well we have performed or what we have accomplished—a life without heart is not worth living.
