Quotes from John Eldredge

Every story has a villain. Every story also has a hero. The Great Love Story the Scriptures are telling us about also reveals a Lover who longs for you. The story of your life is also the story of the long and passionate pursuit of your heart by the One who knows you best and loves you most.

The years have simply reconciled us to the fact that we are all here for the transformation.

A woman who is striving invites others to strive. The message—sometimes implicit in her actions, sometimes explicit through her words—is, "Get your act together. Life is uncertain. There is no time for your heart here. Shape up. Get busy. That's what is important." She does not say, "All is well. All shall be well." Her fear doesn't allow it. She is withholding the very things her world needs.

I believe Christianity is at its core a gospel of life. I believe great breakthrough and healing are available. I believe we can prevent the thief from ransacking our lives if we will do as our Shepherd says. And when we can't seem to find the healing or the breakthrough, when the thief does manage to pillage, I believe ours is a gospel of resurrection. Whatever loss may come, that is not the end of the story. Jesus came that we might have life.

Most of our addictions [shopping, food, bad relationships] as women flare up when we feel that we are not loved or sought after.

Why are so many people struggling with depression and discouragement? They've lost heart. Why can't we seem able to break free of our addictions? Because somewhere along the way, in a moment of carelessness or desperation, we gave our heart away, and now we can't get it back.

As C. S. Lewis wrote, "A car is made to run on gasoline, and it would not run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on himself. He himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other." This is where our sin and our culture have come together to keep us in bondage and brokenness, to prevent the healing of our wounds.

As Buechner says, we are in constant danger of being not actors in the drama of our lives but reactors, "to go where the world takes us, to drift with whatever current happens to be running the strongest.

To enter into a journey of initiation with God requires a new set of questions: What are you trying to teach me here? What issues in my heart are you trying to raise through this? What is it you want me to see? What are you asking me to let go of?

Life is a hypocrite if I can't live The way it moves me!

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.