The Daily Memo

In times of pain and adversity, we might feel as if God has abandoned us. If He were here, we think, He would have done something by now. However, today’s passage says that nothing can separate us from Christ’s love: • Not events. There isn’t any circumstance—no matter how bad—that can remove us from divine love. In fact, we can “conquer through Him who love[s] us” (Romans 8:35-37), and our hardships will only help to transform…

The heart is the connecting point, the meeting place between any two persons. The kind of deep soul intimacy we crave with God and with others can be experienced only from the heart. I know a man who took his daughter to dinner; she was surprised, delighted. For years she had been hoping he would pursue her. When they had been seated, he pulled out his Day Timer and began to review the goals he had set for her that year. "I wanted to burst into tears and run out of the restaurant,;…

Many of us hope to become better people as we journey through life, but we often get stuck and wonder if we’re getting anywhere. We might want to be better at showing patience to others, but we also get exhausted from day-to-day work, and then irritable, and then impatient. We forget Jesus’ ways and often feel like we’re caught in a trap. And yet, the Holy Spirit is actively inviting us to be more like Jesus every moment. Our hope is to learn how to hear…

All sorts of awful things can seem to issue from your heart — anger, lust, fear, petty jealousies. If you think it's you, a reflection of what's really going on in your heart, it will disable you. It could stop your journey dead in its tracks. What you've encountered is either the voice of your flesh or an attempt of the Enemy to distress you by throwing all sorts of thoughts your way and blaming you for it. You must proceed on this assumption: your…

When the Bible tells us about a great man or woman of faith, the Lord in His kindness also often shows us the person’s weakness and failings. For example, let’s look at Abraham. Like any one of us, he had faults. He sinned. He made mistakes. Still, God loved him and accomplished great things through his life. When the Lord spoke, Abraham listened. Just imagine what promises and blessings he would have missed if he’d failed to pay attention. (See Gen. 12:1;…

The strength of my emotional reaction to a problem is correlated with how closely that situation gets to touching my personal wounds. We all have wounds, whether from serious trauma in our lives or from the all-too-common mini-tragedies of being human in a broken world. If we don't truly heal from a wound, we find ways to escape the pain. We cover it up with distractions, numbing agents, and/or with our anger. But once covered, we do not want to uncover a wound. There…

In the aftermath of the Marshall Fire, the most destructive fire in Colorado history, one ministry offered to help families search through the ashes for valuable items. Family members mentioned precious objects they hoped were still preserved. Very little was. One man spoke tenderly of his wedding ring. He’d placed it on his dresser in the upstairs bedroom. The house now gone, its contents had charred or melted into a single layer of debris at the basement level.…

Remember, the purpose of this thing called the Christian life is that our hearts might be restored and set free. That's the deal. That's what Jesus came to do, by his own announcement. Jesus wants Life for us, Life with a capital L, and that Life comes to us through our hearts. But restoring and releasing the heart is no easy project. God doesn't just throw a switch and poof—it's done. He sends his Counselor to walk with us instead. That tells us it'…

As a wise old sage was praying with me through some of the painful memories of my life, I was immediately reminded of the time in middle school when my first girlfriend broke my heart. These wounds can linger for a lifetime if you let them — the first cut is the deepest, and all that. We asked Jesus to take me back to the memory. I saw us, the girl and me; it was that fateful summer day. We were in the living room, just as it happened. Then I saw Jesus enter the room.…