Quotes from John Eldredge

To make room for God to fill the vessel of our soul, we have to begin moving out some of the unnecessary clutter that continually accumulates there like the junk drawer in your kitchen.

You can't ask Christ to come into your wound while you remain far from it. You have to go there with him. Lord Jesus, I give my life to you—everything I am, everything I have become. I surrender myself to you utterly. Come and be my Lord. Be my healer. I give you my wounded heart. Come and meet me here. Enter my heart and soul, my wounds and brokenness, and bring your healing love to me in these very places.

The cry used to be for 'tolerance,' by which we meant, 'We have very strong differences, but we will not let those be the cause of hatred or violence between us. Now it is something else, where all convictions are softened to second or third place while we all agree to enjoy the world as much as we can. But truth is not like conviction. Conviction might be a matter of personal opinion, but truth is like a great mountain, solid and immovable whether we like it or even acknowledge it.

Adventure requires something of us, puts us to the test. Though we may fear the test, at the same time we yearn to be tested, to discover that we have what it takes.

We talk about unplugging, but we're enchanted—by the endless social media circus of love and hatred, the vapid, alarming, sensational, and unforgivable. We're snagged by every new notification. And while we've always had our individual struggles and heartbreaks to deal with, now we have the tragedies of the entire world delivered to us hourly on our mobile devices. This is all very hard on the soul. Traumatizing, in fact.

It takes courage to seek God, and courage to wait for His reply.

Oswald Chambers, a man who wrote profoundly and elegantly on prayer, made a radical statement when he said, "The idea of prayer is not in order to get answers from God." Good heavens—it's not? What then is the purpose? "Prayer is perfect and complete oneness with God." A mighty truth is being uncovered here.

A boy wants to attack something—and so does a man, even if it's only a little white ball on a tee. He wants to whack it into kingdom come.

No wonder when he steps into the heavens to accept the throne the cry goes up, "Worthy! Worthy! Worthy! Make him king!" This man is so worthy.

The passage is not about trying to save your skin by ducking martyrdom or something like that. The word Christ uses for "life" is the word psyche—the word for our soul, our inner self, our heart. He says that the things we do to save our psyche, our self, those plans to save and protect our inner life—those are the things that will actually destroy us.

Our smaller stories are constructed along the plot lines of control and gratification. Once we begin to live by this false self, Satan and his minions sabotage the story to make sure we are exposed. Then he mocks us for our foolishness and hypocrisy for hiding behind such a facade in the first place. Other times, he simply leaves us to die in costume.

Pause when you are offered beauty and make the conscious decision, I receive this grace. We open our clenched soul to let it in. To find God in it. I will often pray, Thank you for this beauty. I receive it into my soul. And with it I receive you, in it, by it, through it—your love, your goodness, your life.