Articles & Posts
The Great Story
Dear Friends, Comrades, Fellow Pilgrims, A very happy Christmastide to you. December is upon us with a rush, and soon the holidays, and then, perhaps, a breath before 2018 gets underway. The swift passing of the days—and even that feeling, “Where did 2017 go?”—all this is reminding us that this Story is racing forward; we are being carried along towards some great moment. Story. It is one of the greatest gifts the Jews gave the world. For before them (and in many places, long after) the world and its religions did not think of life as a Story at all. Most pagan peoples saw human experience as an endlessly repeating cycle of birth and death, headed nowhere. Through the Jewish people, and then the early Church, God gave us our bearings, gave us meaning and direction and above all a breathtaking hope by revealing to us the Great Story he is telling. Story is, therefore, how we orient ourselves. I was enjoying some pieces of The Lord of the Rings trilogy the other night, just snatches here and there to remind me what it is like to live in an epic tale. I love the part where dear Sam Gamgee reminds Mr. Frodo of the critical importance of story. Frodo is about to give up, under the weight of it all: “I can’t do this, Sam.” To which Sam replies, I know. It’s all wrong. By rights we shouldn’t even be here. But we are. It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something. It is the power of the Great Story that gives us heart to carry on. Life is not, as Macbeth lamented, “A tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” It is not an endless cycle. This is headed somewhere; we are racing towards a breathtaking climax. And so Christians around the world will repeat The Story to one another this month, in pageants and liturgy, sermons and carols. We repeat the most beautiful moment thus far—the Invasion, the Incarnation. Our rescue. We need to repeat it, for like Mr. Frodo we bend under the weight of our own heavy burdens, and evil of this hour. One of the ways we rehearse the Story in our family is by reading favorite passages and poems to one another. We love John Donne’s Divine Poems, a series of rich stanzas that are so beautiful and compact, you have to take them slowly. I thought I’d share a few snippets here, my Sam to your Frodo. The first stanza—La Corona—ends with the lines, “Tis time that heart and voice be lifted high” (there’s the telling of the Story), “Salvation to all that will is nigh” (as the first Christmas approaches). Stanza two—Annunciation—speaks of the mystery of Christ in Mary’s womb, ending with the gorgeous line, “Immensity, cloistered in thy dear womb.” Stanza three—Nativity—starts with the same line, and then carries us into and through Bethlehem: Immensity, cloistered in thy dear womb, Now leaves His well-beloved imprisonment. There he hath made himself to his intent Weak enough, now into our world to come; But O! for thee, for Him, hath th’ inn no room? Yet lay Him in a stall, and from th’ orient, Stars, and wise men will travel to prevent The effects of Herod's jealous general doom. See'st thou, my soul, with thy faith's eye, how He Which fills all place, yet none holds Him, doth lie? Was not His pity towards thee wondrous high, That would have need to be pitied by thee? Kiss Him, and with Him into Egypt go, With His kind mother, who partakes thy woe. So much is captured in these lines. But can’t you also feel the Story moving forward with an irreversible power and thrust? Christ is born, the Magi arrive just in time to rescue him from Herod’s genocide, and the angel has Joseph whisk the family off to Egypt. Every event, great and small, has meaning. And continuity. It is so good to be reminded of that as well—this Story is moving forward with power towards its glorious climax, or at least, the great finish of this chapter. For like Mr. Frodo we also wonder why evil has so much sway, and if it really matters how or if we carry on. But it does matter. The Kingdom of God is winning; the Invasion worked and it is working right now. Magnificently. And we each have our role to play. So tell each other the Story this Christmas season. Drink it in. Believe every word. We are racing towards the finish of this chapter, and what a finish it will be. Then…the feast. And all things made new. Merry Christmas friends, from your friends here at Wild at Heart. Download the Wild at Heart December 2017 Newsletter Here.
John Eldredge
Mislabeled
On a recent trip where I was going to be away for nine days, I arrived safe and sound but my luggage did not. It was, however, one of the rare occasions that I'd actually kept the sticky part of my baggage claim, along with my ticket, so the baggage man could look it up. He came to me shortly and said, “Your bag is here." “It is?!?” I replied in relieved wonder. “Yes. It’s right here.” He was standing next to a bag that was definitely not mine. This one was hard-shelled. Mine is soft. This one had no distinguishing ribbons on the handle. Mine does. Additionally, this one was pink, while mine is black. Let’s just say I recognized it as not mine right away. "That is definitely not my bag," I told him. He refused to believe me. He took my portion of the claim ticket, held it up to the one on the bag, and lo and behold, they both said, S ELDREDGE. He was adamant that it was indeed my bag, and it took a few minutes for him to understand that the bag had been mistagged. The only identification on the pink imposter was a name. No address. No phone number. Oh, dear. The mystery search began without much hope. Still, somewhere in the world a person was going to be experiencing the same thing but with my bag. My hope was in the folks at the other end. My bag was mislabeled. It was mine but had another name on it. It should have read “Stasi Eldredge.” I have no idea what it did say. All I learned later was that my bag had traveled on to Korea. A few days later, it was returned to me intact. Have you ever been mislabeled? I have. I am Stasi, but I have been labeled many other things. Things that are contrary to the truth. I bet you have too. We get labeled all kinds of cruel things. Unwanted. Too much trouble. Disposable. And many, many worse things. All of which can be difficult to combat when in the face of someone—or some spirit—assigning it to us with such surety. God names us Beloved. Child. Chosen. Seen. Wanted. Sought after. Holy. Dearly loved. And many, many other glorious things that are true. Who are we going to believe? We need to believe our Father. We need to be so rooted in our true names that a mislabeling is spotted as a farce as easily as the pink bag was. Our histories and those who populate it may scream a false identity over us, but only our Father God has the right to tell us who we are—and to whom we belong. We belong to Him. We are His. We are often mismarked, but the Holy Spirit has marked you in the permanent red ink of our Jesus' blood. He has set His seal upon you. Claim it. https://youtu.be/OjxwryxSrIY
Stasi Eldredge
Defensiveness or Repentance?
I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate to do. –Romans 7:15, 18b I recently traveled to South Dakota to join a group of men in enjoying some of the finest pheasant hunting there is. At the same time, my wife, Tannah, decided to go to southern California to visit family and friends and to tie up some loose ends from our recent move from California to Colorado. I was to return from South Dakota and she from California the same day. Though I was scheduled for a late-afternoon flight, I had to get one of the guys back to the airport mid-morning for his flight. Hoping to avoid a long day of waiting, I checked on an earlier flight to Colorado Springs. It was full, but the agent said there’d likely be a cancellation, and I was first in line for standby. After the earlier flight boarded, there was one seat empty. The missing passenger was paged twice, with no response. Just as I was about to be given the seat, the passenger showed up. The plane was full. I really didn’t want to spend the next several hours there and called Tannah to express my frustration. As she walked to her gate to board her plane in California, I told her how disappointed and irritated I was to be stuck in this airport. Because of background noise, she had a hard time hearing me and kept asking, “What? What? What?” To which I said, “Do you not ever use those expensive earbuds I bought you for your phone?” To which she said, “WHAT?” My irritation at being delayed at the airport now turned on Tannah. When she arrived at her gate and was able to focus and better hear me, I repeated myself: ”Where are your earbuds?” She quickly detected my very critical tone. “I ask again, don’t you ever use them? Where are they??” She paused, then said, “They’re in the bottom of my purse. With the expensive battery charger you gave me.” And then, “I’m now waiting for you to criticize me about all the stuff I bring on trips that I don’t need.” I could hear her tears on the other end as she said, “I can never please you.” How many times have I done this to her in our marriage? I’m embarrassed to even guess. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate to do. Now comes the critical moment: Do I go defensive—hiding behind the fig leaf of my critical spirit—and start making excuses about how I am just trying to make her life better? Or do I pause, repent, and ask her forgiveness? God knew I needed several hours in an airport that afternoon to own my brokenness and take this to Him. The journey to healing is painful.
Bart Hansen
Snorkeling
When our sons were between the ages of 8 and 12, we had the opportunity to introduce them to snorkeling. I had only been recently introduced to it myself and I had just loved it. Loved it like Scrooge loved money before that auspicious Christmas Eve. Just give me more! Loved it like bighorn sheep love mountains. I felt so at home there. It was a physical representation of a spiritual reality. Non-swimmers on shore had no idea of the very real world that remained unseen to them. Venture in and the reality of an underwater realm was as true as the existence of a spiritual one if you would but choose to see. I was beyond excited to introduce my sons to the wonders of a world they had never been exposed to before and one that I came so alive in! The colors of the water. The feel of the swell as it raised and lowered your body on the surface. The beauty displayed in the mysterious fish. The delicate differences in their shapes. The splendor of God’s creative handiwork there to discover with awe and joy. AMAZING. After the boys had their snorkeling gear on we entered the water and I warned them to stay clear of the coral. The coral and rocks were sharp. They needed to be certain to swim over them and not let the waves push them into them and thereby shred their tender skin. On I went. Coral cuts are really painful. It would hurt. Make sure there is enough water between you and it to swim over without danger. Oh – I continued – sometimes you will see holes in the underwater rocks and you might want to explore them by sticking your hand into them. Don’t do it!!!!! An eel may live in that hole! It could bite your finger off! Eels? They asked with horrified eyes. Don’t worry, I lamely assured them. You don’t bother them, they won’t bother you. Eels? They asked again with undiminished worry. What do they look like? I calmed them down. They look like snakes only fatter. Now, let’s go enjoy this!!!! In their watchful posture swimming with fear over coral and scanning every stone for a hole and making sure that every piece of waving seaweed wasn’t actually a snake coming to bite their finger off, I don’t think they saw a fish. They didn’t like snorkeling very much. In fact, it was years before they did. And you’re welcome. And whoops. My emphasis on what to be alert for regarding danger overshadowed my emphasis on what to be on the alert for regarding beauty and goodness. I had assumed they would be overwhelmed by the wonder. The warnings were, to my mind, simply an important side note. But my way of presenting it to them shifted their gaze from the beauty to discover to the threat to be avoided. It is a mistake I have made in many areas stemming from my mother’s heart that wants to shield others from pain. Spiritual warfare is as real as that underwater wonderland. We are instructed to be on the alert, not unaware of the devil’s schemes. We are to live prepared for battle wearing the full armor of God because we are living in the midst of the most important battle ever waged. It is vital that we stay girded up, putting on love, vigilant against the enemy’s incessant lies and accusation. He is a divider who comes to steal, kill and destroy and he isn’t very nice about it. AND. The beauty of God is vastly more breathtaking than the ugliness of Satan. The power of the Almighty is immeasurably more so than the attempts of the enemy to usurp Him. God is a warrior. He is our Victor. He is matchless. He is supreme. He is unrivaled. He has won. Love trumps hate. Goodness smothers wickedness. Mercy triumphs over judgment. We are to live alert to the moves of the Holy Spirit, following and obeying Him wherever He leads. Our gaze is fixed upon His beauty with breathless anticipation while at the same time we remain alert to snakes in all their many guises. The joy of the Lord is our strength. Love overcomes fear. Stay clear of the coral but with eyes open to truth and wonder, enjoy the swim.
Stasi Eldredge
Our Reach Across the World
Dear Friends, I have a beautiful picture I want to share with you… Our team has been praying for some time now, asking God what His next move is on the earth, and the role He has for us to play. (We have this growing conviction, a strong sense that He is moving, and about to move in a deeper way, upon the earth.) In several different prayer times now, over the course of several months, we have seen a picture of “fires” igniting all over the map, all over the world. You are starting those fires, He said. Those are your people—that is your message. That picture fills our hearts with excitement and passion. It brings us such joy and happiness! Deep in the DNA of every friend of Jesus is this same passion, to be a part of his mission on the earth—to see lives rescued, restored, to see redemption, to bring about beauty from ashes. I know that’s deep in you, too. How exciting to think that God is about to do something powerful! One of the sweet gifts during the last Captivating retreat here in Colorado was not only to witness the restoration of women, but to hear from them the ministry of Wild at Heart around the world. A woman came from Guatemala because her church developed a ministry to women based on Captivating. A woman started an online outreach to teenage girls using our message; she already has 17,000 followers. Another woman came privately to Stasi to report healing in her gender identity; she said, “I think Wild at Heart has a really deep ministry to the LGBTQ community.” One life is worth rescuing. One heart is worth restoring. But God wants to show us something more—a stunning outreach across the world. Because our work is so intimate and deeply personal, healing the hearts and souls of God’s beloved, that is what we tend to talk about. So you might not be aware of these fires that are popping up all over… Several different ministries have been birthed to fight human trafficking through people whose lives have been transformed by Wild at Heart. We recently sat with one couple now serving in Thailand, and heard the beautiful stories of little boys and girls rescued from prostitution through their work. I just got an email from another ministry telling me about two girls they saved. A man came all the way from South Africa to our boot camp in Colorado, where he gave his life to Christ, and upon returning home he started an orphanage to rescue refugee children coming south from ravaged African nations. “I was fatherless,” he said. “Now I am father to hundreds.” Friends in Switzerland developed a program to disciple young millennials in this message, over a one-year experience. I love the photos they send of these young people—eyes bright, faces glowing. Especially when you know suicide is epidemic with our young people. Earlier this year we shared communication with the persecuted church in Syria (!), thanking us for our message and our resources—which they are drawing strength from, and using to strengthen others there. Holy. An email came last week from a pastor in Zimbabwe, telling us his plans to use Wild at Heart and Captivating to help the young people understand who they are. An earlier letter from Liberia reports on their work, using Becoming Myself with young girls. I could go on and on. Colombia. Poland. Norway. The UK. These are the “fires.” You are those fires! And we sense from God that he is wanting to increase the movement, deepen the discipleship, strengthen existing fires and light many new ones! Wow. Just ...wow. Twice a year I reach out to ask your financial help. We don’t manipulate; we don’t raise more than we need. We simply let you know we have a real need, and ask if you could help. Now is that time. Our international work does not pay for itself; we do it as an offering to those countries, those allies. We love being generous! We know you do, too. We do need your help. We need to raise a little more than half our budget before the end of the year. Would you be able to send a gift our way? You can send in a check. Or, you can give online at our website www.ransomedheart.com. Your gift will reach out across the world! You are supporting a beautiful work of God when you support Wild at Heart. And that work is growing! Breathtaking! Thank you so much for partnering with us. For being those fires. For helping us light new ones! With you for the Kingdom, John PS. We are doing our first Captivating retreat in Australia December 1-4. We know that fire will start many others. There’s still space to attend there, so let your friends “down under” know! Download the November 2017 Newsletter here.
John Eldredge
Cousin Dwalo
So—you’ll notice that most of the articles in this issue begin with or pretty quickly refer to some conversation we’ve recently had with another guy. We put that in there to send a message: hanging out with other guys is a good thing to do, and paying attention to their questions is an even better thing to do. Maybe also to let you know we’re listening; we want this journal to be massively helpful. Here’s how this conversation went… There was in fact a real group of guys who’d gathered for some trap shooting, cigars, and conversation. (We do this like once a year, sometimes every other year, so don’t get the impression we live on The Island of Manly Happiness and Camaraderie). We were sitting around afterwards, chatting about this and that, when one guy shared that he’s really been enjoying all those Navy SEAL books/biographies that have come out in the past few years. You could feel the conversation shifting in the direction of significant; more than half the circle nodded because we’ve all been reading them, too. Right—the life of Real Men was the new mood in the circle. But then he said, “So I have a pretty good idea what a warrior looks like at war, but what does it mean for me with a job and young kids?” For about 20 seconds, nobody took a bite, a drink, a drag on their stogie. We all just sat there like men hit with a pail of cold water. We went from the epic of heroic lives to the threat of mundane in ours. Before we could offer something—anything—in return, the man next to him said, “Yeah. You guys talk about ‘knowing your story’ and ‘finding a story worth living’ and all that, but I feel like Frodo’s cousin who didn’t even make the movie. There’s nothing about my story that will be worth telling. No—really.” There was some awkward laughter, but I think every guy was taken from the thrill of looking at other men’s epic stories to their real life, and diminishment was descending upon the circle like a cloud. I couldn’t shake the conversation for days, especially that bit about, “Where is the heroic in normal life?” and, “What makes a life meaningful?” When so many young men are ending their lives by suicide, we know this generation is facing a massive crisis of meaning. One thing that struck me was that this crisis is in part the fruit of being exposed to the amazing, way too often. Surely you’ve seen Danny Macaskill’s little film The Ridge. (At 53,819,468 YouTube views, I’m guessing you have.) Macaskill is a bicycle stunt rider from Mars. In this film, he first rides his mountain bike up this ridiculous knife-edge ridge on the Isle of Skye—bouncing on his back tire over chasms and hopping on his front wheel up boulders by some unknown power. Then, for the heck of it, he comes racing back down at inhuman speeds, ending the ride by hitting a sheep fence and doing a perfect aerial 360 to simply keep riding. The wow factor is way up there. But when you’re done, you don’t feel like going out and taking up mountain biking. Because the bar was just set somewhere on the rings of Saturn. We could name a jillion more—all those unbelievably impressive feats we’ve seen “regular” dudes doing on all those millions of videos that have gotten passed around. Heli-skiing. Base-jumping. Flying suits. Motorcycle stunts. I think the effect is actually toxic; I think it makes the average guy feel, perhaps subconsciously, My life sucks. There is no way I will ever be amazing. A few days later I was reading an essay on spiritual acedia, or spiritual malaise/sloth—a sin our fathers seemed very keen on warning us about. (It is one of the Seven Deadly Sins.) This leapt out at me: Our lives are made into a succession of episodes, in which any fulfillment or happiness will largely be an accident, at best a coincidence, and in either case will be of little account to us or to anyone else. In fact, we can give only the barest account of them, for there are to be no narratives to our lives, no intelligible threads running through them… (Henry Fairlie) Even before I finished, I knew I’d hit upon the millennial malaise. Acedia. (We will devote more to this in a coming issue and podcast, ‘cause it’s big, guys.) For now, the takeaway is this: When you subtly make an agreement with a loss of story, you cannot escape the slide into a loss of meaning—losing your life’s meaning. Despair quickly follows. Now—God did not make us all Navy SEALs or even Macaskills. So the truly meaningful life can’t be, “Go out and do something epic like Danny Macaskill or one of those SEALs.” It just can’t. It took me days and days to think of what I wish I’d said back in the cigar circle (doesn’t your clarity always come later?). But it goes something like this: We live in a catastrophic world (add stronger language here). This world is seriously broken; nothing is as it ought to be. We also live in a time of evil unleashed on the earth (surely you see evil ravaging humanity). Therefore, in a climate like ours, with a total loss of meaning, with brokenness all around and even within, as evil rampages, any series of choices towards the good is heroic. In a world of hatred, any choice to love is heroic. In an age of staggering unbelief, any commitment to faith is absolutely epic. In a world built upon the False, any ongoing commitment, however faltering, to choose the Real is heroic. And in a world totally stripped of gender, to choose the narrow way of masculine formation is utterly heroic and epic. Honestly, I’ve been in some pretty gnarly wilderness situations where we survived through heroic decisions. But those are far easier than living back in the world, where we are so severely tested and never really see we are so severely tested, nor do we see the epic consequences of our small decisions. Loving, believing, and persevering are more epic here because it is a life we are talking about, and because it is so deeply opposed. Especially with diminishment. I just released a book called All Things New, a book about Hope, because we live in a time of such sweeping hopelessness. One of the things I try and speak to is this “Frodo’s cousin” issue, this What is the meaning of my life? Allow me to quote a bit: “As we prepared for Craig’s memorial service this summer, I was struck by the gross inadequacy of an hour or 90 minutes to meet the need. How do you tell the story of a human life? How can you do justice to all the hidden sorrow, the valiant fighting, the millions of small unseen choices, the impact of a great soul on thousands of other lives? How can you begin to say what a life means to the kingdom of God? The answer is, only in the kingdom of God. Only once we are there. Your story will be told rightly. I know the idea has usually been set within the context of judgment, and justice will be served. But the friends of God do not face judgment; for us, the celebration of our lives is clearly put in the context of reward. But each one should build with care. For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. If anyone builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, their work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each person’s work. If what has been built survives, the builder will receive a reward. (1 Corinthians 3:10-14) We know our every sin is forgiven; we know we live under mercy. We know there is no condemnation now for those who are in Christ (Romans 8:1). No condemnation, ever. We will be cloaked in righteousness, and it will emanate from our very being. So if we can remove all fear of exposure or shame from our hearts, if we can set this safely within the context of our Father’s love, it helps us towards a great, great moment in the kingdom: the time for every story to be told rightly. How wonderful it will be to see Jesus Christ vindicated, after so many eons of mockery, dismissal, and vilification. Our Beloved has endured such slander, mistrust, and, worst of all, such grotesque distortion by the caricatures and religious counterfeits paraded in his name. All the world will see him as he is, see him crowned King. Every tongue will be silenced, and his vindication will bring tremendous joy to those who love him! But friends—that vindication is also yours. You probably have a number of stories you would love to have told rightly – to have your actions explained and defended by Jesus. I know I do. I think we will be surprised by what Jesus noticed. The “sheep” certainly are when their story is told: “Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink?” (Matthew 5:37). What a lovely surprise—all our choices great and small have been seen; and each act will be rewarded. All those decisions your family misinterpreted, and the accusations you bore, the many ways you paid for it. The thousands of unseen choices to overlook a cutting remark, a failure, to be kind to that friend who failed you again. The things that you wish you had personally done better, but at the time no one knew what you were laboring under—the warfare, the depression, the chronic fatigue. The millions of ways you have been missed and terribly misunderstood. Your Defender will make it all perfectly clear; you will be vindicated.”
John Eldredge
Stolen Things
It’s been quite the week. The crisis’ that have come this week have come as crises do – out of the blue. The week began with me finding pools of blood on my carpet, which led me to my 10-year-old golden retriever. He had somehow sliced his back paw open in such a deep way that he required surgery. And wow was that an expensive fix. (Though he needs a couple weeks of tender care, he will fully recover.) The next day the brakes went out in the car. The following day brought more unexpected bummers. I need this week to be over! Then this morning I got the call that my newlywed son’s motorcycle had been stolen in the night; his wife sobbing out the request for prayer. I drove to their apartment as soon as I could and once inside, my now very calm daughter told me that she was praying for the person who stole their bike. Their insurance is limited. They were actually selling the motorcycle relying on their one car to get them to work because they need the money in this tight economy. And here she was, not even an hour later, praying for the one who had violated their sense of safety and robbed them of much needed income. “I have compassion for him. When you steal something, you are feeling pretty desperate”, she said. I have an amazing daughter in law. We have an amazing God. He is the Healer. He is the Restorer. He heals hearts and wounds. He restores lives, relationships and stolen things; including stories, innocence, joy and years. We have a mean thief who loves to steal, kill and destroy. And he has lost. He has already lost. He lost again today.
Stasi Eldredge
I Can!
I was supposed to be strong again, the massage therapist told me with a bit of accusation in her voice. Yeah, I know, I thought. My children had pulled together and given me a massage for my birthday. It was luxurious and wonderful. The masseuse was amazing and skilled. But when she tried to move my leg and hip a certain way, she turned corrective. My hip replacement surgery was a year ago. My recovery was to take 3 – 6 months the doctors said. At six months, I was nowhere near my pre-surgery condition. I was so relieved when the doctor confessed that with a unique and long lasting injury like I had, recovery would take more like 18 months. I was relieved because it freed me from the accusations of failure that were haunting me. Accusations reinforced by a well-meaning masseuse. In the meantime, my focus had turned from what I was unable to do. Lift my leg very high. Be bendy. Get up off the floor with grace. Straighten up from bending over without pain. Walk long distances. Jog. Etcetera. I’ve been looking down. I’ve been focusing on my clay feet and my weak hip. God grabbed my attention the other day and asked me to shift my gaze from what I couldn’t do to what I can do. I can walk without pain. I can bend over. I can grocery shop. I can do short hikes. I can swim. I can garden for short periods. I can water plants. I can arrange flowers. I can cook. I can set tables and create beauty. I can dream. I can invite people over for a time of encouragement and good food. I can enjoy life. I can laugh. I can clean my closet and other crazy things that I don’t actually want to do. I can do so much more than I can’t. And when I look to Jesus and his life in me, there is so much more that I can do together with him. I can forgive hurts. I can worship Jesus. I can grow. I can pray. I have access to all the resources of Heaven! I can know peace. I don’t have to live with fear taunting me as if it holds the future rather than my good Father. I can love people. The list is long. It is a good and life-giving list. So I am shifting my gaze from my weakness to Jesus' strength, from my failures to his victory, and from my clay feet to his glorious face. "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." Phil 4:13
Stasi Eldredge
Recovering the Romance
I first remember the Romance calling to me when I was a boy of six or seven, just past dusk on a summer evening, when the hotter and dustier work of the farm had given way to another song. Something warm and alive and poignantly haunting would call to me from the mysterious borders of the farm that was my world. I would walk toward it, past the corrals where our milk cows rested, down through rows of dark green corn that towered far above my head. The corn, imperious in its height and numbers, presented its own kind of Enchanted Forest. Every leaf that gave way before my outstretched arms offered possible mystery… There in the moonlight I would squat down on my heels near the water's edge, letting my toes sink into the cool sand. In that place I was in the middle of the singers. The voices of crickets, katydids, and cicadas would come to me, carried above the sounds of the creek and mingled with the pungent odor of tannins. Tens of thousands of stream-side musicians sang to me the magic stories of the farms and forests. –Brent Curtis Twenty years ago this spring I published a book with my dear friend Brent titled The Sacred Romance. Many people still mistake it for a marriage book, I’m sad to say. It is a love story, but far older and much more reliable than matrimony. Rather, it is the story of how God has pursued our hearts ever since we were children. A shocking, massive revelation for many people to hear that God cares about—even yearns for—the life of our hearts. That our hearts even matter to God is one of the greatest, most hopeful turns of faith that can come into our lives. But I am not going to make that case here; it is made far better in the pages of that book, even better still in the pages of Scripture. I am after something else at the moment. To realize God has been wooing our hearts ever since we were young, through the very things we love, is an equally startling revelation, life-changing if you’ll let it be. That, too, is an assumption I am making rather than defending, for what I want to get to may matter even more to where we are today. But permit me to catch you up on the story. The “Romance” began for me during summers on my grandfather's ranch. I grew up in the suburbs of southern California during the 1960s and ‘70s. One vast, sprawling, uninterrupted concrete and asphalt metropolis, about 10 million people at the time. Not many places for a boy to chase pollywogs or wander through cornfields at dusk. My grandfather, however, had a cattle ranch in eastern Oregon, near where the Snake River forms the winding liquid border with Idaho. It is high desert country—hot and dry in the summer, transformed by irrigation into an vast, green agricultural quilt. Potatoes, onions, sugar beets, and mint, along with cattle pastures and the alfalfa fields needed to feed them through the cold winters. As I wrote 20 years ago, My grandfather, “Pop,” filled an empty place in my soul at a critical moment. He was my hero, a cowboy and a gentleman in a Stetson and boots. Spending summers on his Ranch was a schoolboy’s dream—riding horses, chasing frogs, harassing the big old cows when I was sure no one was looking. I remember riding in his old Ford pickup, Pop with his cowboy hat and leather work gloves, waving at nearly everyone on the road. Folks seem to wave back with a sense of respect. It gave me a settled feeling that someone was in charge, someone strong and loving. Pop loved me as a boy and called me to be a man. He taught me to saddle and ride a horse—not merely for fun, but to take my place on a working ranch. Together we explored the open spaces of the eastern Oregon sagebrush, mending fences, tending sick cattle, fishing Huck Finn-style with willow branches and a piece of string. Over the years, I have come to appreciate just what a staggering gift and dramatic rescue those summers were. Would that everyone were so lucky. But the Romance can come in many ways, thank God: chasing fireflies, the old library, your favorite books, the first snow, roasting marshmallows, secret forts you built of cardboard boxes. And recovering it—or discovering and then recovering it—can be one of our life’s greatest treasures. Last month, Stasi and I returned to the tiny town of Nyssa, Oregon, for my grandmother’s funeral. It would be the first time back in nearly 30 years. Pop died when I was 17; my grandmother eventually remarried, sold the ranch, and moved to another town. I was very guarded in going back, because I know that the Romance—now even more precious to me than gold—was flowing through those childhood years like the river flowed through the valley, in a story orchestrated by God. It is not forever located in an actual place. Things change. Towns change. I didn’t even know if the ranch would still be there. “You can never go back,” became a saying because cynical though it may be, far too often it is true. Too many broken hearts have tried to go back and only found there the empty shell. Brent knew this himself; as a very lost young man he returned to his childhood farm, hoping to find answers there: I stood there that November day looking down onto a small brown stream bordered in lifeless gray hardwoods and monochromatic fallen leaves. A few hundred yards off to my right stood our old farmhouse, now vacant with a large hole in the roof. The barns and sheds and corrals that had given it a reason to exist were gone. Weeds grew in a tangled confusion where the corn had once stood in ordered wildness. The weariness of it all came together in the silence of those absent August songsters from so many years ago. I remember feeling a sharp pain in my chest that I silenced with cold anger. Only years later did Brent come to understand that the flowing nature of the Romance is situated not forever in a place, but in the living, moving story God has for us. I believe we are in a process of restoration, at the center of which is a recovery of wholeheartedness. I believe that sometimes God will invite us back into treasured memories and special places. And if it is by his invitation, we are safe to go there. He takes us back for several reasons—not only for the feast of memories that comes (some of which needing to be healed), but also to reawaken sleeping places in our hearts. Mostly I think he takes us back to show us as adults all the ways he was wooing us in our childhood, even when we didn't know him at the time. What surprised me was how incredibly rich it was to drive down those country roads again. To smell the onion fields, go into the small M & W Market. A thousand memories came rushing in. And then to pull up on the ranch road bordering my grandfather's place. Yes, it wore the burden of 40 years gone by: the paint was faded and peeling; the pastures were neglected; my favorite cottonwood was gone. But nearly everything else was intact—every barn, shed, and even the old tack room are still there. “I used to feed the horses in that trough,” I whispered to Stasi. “There’s the old workshop. I oiled that shingle roof one summer.” The experience was almost like a waking dream where you get to revisit the best days of your childhood. So many memories. So much of the Romance to be reclaimed. Now yes, we do need to be careful with our hearts as we venture back, either in memory or in actual places. The Romance moves and shifts as we grow, move, and shift. The Romance is not in present-day Oregon for me; it is right here in Colorado now, because this is where God and I live together. This summer it is in the sound of crickets and hummingbirds, the smell of petunias, my granddaughters’ first popsicles. When we mistake the Romance for a person or a place, even a season of our life, it can really break our hearts, because people and places and seasons change and pass away, and if we are not careful, tender places of our hearts can pass away with them. I wrote a new book this year. It speaks of the promise of the restoration of all things (one of the greatest promises of the Romance), which Jesus makes very clear includes actual locations like homes and lands (Matthew 19:28-29). There was an old wooden bridge on my grandfather’s ranch; it crossed a large irrigation canal the size of a good stream, which flowed constantly with milky water the color of well-creamed coffee. Cottonwoods grew in the rich loamy soil along the canal, and their huge boughs covered it in shade all summer long. Even in the dog days of August it was always cool there, and the waters made the quietest lovely sounds as they passed under the bridge. It was a magical place for a boy. Coming in from the fields we would race the last hundred yards, galloping our horses over the bridge which boomed and echoed under our hooves with a marvelous deep sound like thunder, or cannon fire from the deck of a great ship. Swallows would shoot out from under either side, spinning away up and down the canal. As far as I was concerned, in my seven year old heart, that bridge had always been there, and always would be. Wallace Stevens shared a similar experience from his boyhood, Unless everything in a man's memory of childhood is misleading, there is a time somewhere between the ages of five and twelve that corresponds to the phase ethologists have isolated in the development of birds, when an impression lasting only a few seconds may be imprinted on the young bird for life…I still sometimes dream, occasionally in the most intense and brilliant shades of green, of a jungly dead bend of the Whitemud River below Martin's Dam. Each time I am haunted, on awakening, by a sense of meanings just withheld, and by a profound nostalgic melancholy. Yet why should this dead loop of river, known only for a few years, be so charged with potency in my unconscious? Why should there be around it so many other images that constantly recurring dreams or in the phrases I bring up off the typewriter onto the page? They live in me like underground water; every well I put down taps them. (Marking the Sparrow’s Fall) I now understand, some 50 years later, that the bridge under the cottonwoods was filled with “a sense of meanings” and “charged with potency” because the Promise was coming to me through that place. And oh, how I would love to see it again, take my own grandchildren there; charge our horses over and make cannon fire, then sit quietly and dangle our bare feet over the edge, watching the swallows come and go. Yes—I had hoped to visit that bridge again last month. But the ranch belongs to someone else now, and the bridge is tucked way back on private property. I did not feel comfortable trespassing. There were so many gifts in my visit, so many wonderful memories recovered. I felt God saying that my visit to the bridge waits for the Restoration. I drove away, probably for the last time in this life, with a settled heart. I’ll see it soon enough. John Click here for our current issue of And Sons Magazine. And for more about my new book, see this link.
John Eldredge
Weak Girl
Two years ago I had T-shirts made that I love. “Strong Girl” and “Strong Woman.” Maybe you got one. I got four. Passionate about us becoming strong in the Lord, I wrote this in September of ‘15: “We need to know that it’s being strong in Christ that is BEAUTIFUL. It’s from Jesus, that we can receive a deep sense of value, worth, and dignity. We can be strong in spirit and in integrity. We can be “Every Day Strong” because we are leaning into Jesus. He is our life and breath and being. We need to increasingly learn that our lives are no longer our own – that we have died with Christ and it is now His Spirit that lives in and through us – partnering with us, strengthening us, guiding us, comforting us, cheering us on – loving us as we have longed to be loved and need to be loved and ARE LOVED by the King of Love. Knowing that and growing in that makes for one Strong Girl. One mightily Strong Woman. And I want to be one. I want Jesus to be my strong even in my most weak, broken and doubt filled seasons. He is my life.” It still encourages me today. I still believe it. But. You knew there was a “but” coming, didn’t you? But, these days the blog I would write is the one titled above. Weak Girl. I’ve been in a long season of weakness. The injury, degenerative disease, and subsequent surgery on my hip was a year ago and I have about six more months to go for a full recovery. I thought I would bounce right back. Nope. It feels like a failure on my part. Like I didn’t do something right. And the truth is, of course there are some things I didn’t do right. Many things, actually. How do you spell discouragement? Hope deferred. Loss. Things stolen. Self-blame. Failure. Yup. Physically is just one of the ways I’ve felt weak. Discouragement multiplies. It grows like yeast. It bleeds over. Unchecked, it can affect every area of our lives. Feeling discouraged can take a person to the mat with God. Questions rise: “Why didn’t you….?” I am reminded yet again that God is the God of all HOPE. He is not discouraged, and he doesn’t want us to be either. There is mercy for all of us in our weakness. There are times when we can’t pull ourselves up from a chair or pull ourselves up from doubt or hopelessness. But God can. The other day I was feeling VERY discouraged and crying out to the God I love whom I was currently mad at. I was driving in my car and it had just begun to gently rain. Suddenly a song came on via my phone. It wasn’t on the playlist I was listening to. It was, in fact, one I didn’t know I had. "Mercy is Falling" by David Ruis. “Mercy is falling, is falling, is falling. Mercy is falling like a sweet spring rain.” Say what? WHAT? God cued up a song for me. It was a direct intervention, and He spoke to my heart that even in my lowest place – crying out to Him – asking for understanding – begging for His help which seems so slow to come sometimes – not feeling very strong in my faith in the moment – my Father sang that there is mercy for me. There is mercy for all of us. We can be weak. He alone is strong all the time. And there is mercy. Lead us, Lord, to the rock that is higher than we are. Be our strength in our weakness. Speak Your life into our weary places. We break agreement with discouragement and agree with the truth that You are the God of all HOPE. We too have hope; I too have hope, because of You.
Stasi Eldredge
Summer
Now summer is all around us. I was sitting on the porch early this morning, sipping a cup of tea, enjoying those very early moments before the sounds of the city have ramped up, before I needed to rush into the day myself. In the cool of a summer morning, I was loving the birds singing joyfully, trying to outdo one another in the trees in our yard. Such a hopeful, lovely sound. The fragrance of summer flowers wafted over me from a hanging basket nearby. A butterfly fluttered by in its whimsical “what-are-you-worried-about” careless way. For a wonderful, lingering moment, it all felt brimming with promise. Not just the promise that it’s going to be a good day, but something richer, deeper. The promise that everything is going to be wonderful. You’ve probably felt that promise, too, as you stood in some favorite spot—watching the beauty of the waves, spring flowers in the desert, walking the streets of Paris at night, or sitting in your garden with a cup of coffee. Something keeps whispering to us through the beauty we love; something seems to be “calling” to us through the beauty and goodness summer especially brings. “Many things begin with seeing in this world of ours,” wrote British artist, Lillias Trotter. “There lies before us a beautiful, possible life.” I love summer. I love the lushness of life it brings. I love the sense of promise nearly every summer morning proclaims. But most of us—while we sense the promise—are not really sure what to make of it. There was an old, wooden bridge on my grandfather’s ranch. It crossed a large irrigation canal the size of a good stream, which flowed constantly with milky water, the color of well-creamed coffee. Cottonwoods grew in the rich, loamy soil along the canal, and their huge boughs covered it in shade all summer long. Even in the dog days of August, it was always cool there, and the waters made the quietest lovely sounds as they passed under the bridge. It was a magical place for a boy. Coming in from the fields, we would race the last hundred yards, galloping our horses over the bridge, which boomed and echoed under our hooves with a marvelous deep sound like thunder, or cannon fire from the deck of a great ship. Swallows would shoot out from under either side, spinning away up and down the canal. As far as I was concerned, in my seven-year-old heart, that bridge had always been there, and always would be. Wallace Stevens shared a similar experience from his boyhood, I still sometimes dream, occasionally in the most intense and brilliant shades of green, of a jungly dead bend of the Whitemud River below Martin's Dam. Each time I am haunted, on awakening, by a sense of meanings just withheld, and by a profound nostalgic melancholy. Yet why should this dead loop of river, known only for a few years, be so charged with potency in my unconscious? Why should there be around it so many other images that constantly recurring dreams or in the phrases I bring up off the typewriter onto the page? They live in me like underground water; every well I put down taps them. Some sort of Promise seems to be woven into the tapestry of life. It comes to us through golden moments, through beauty that takes our breath away, through precious memories and the hope even a birthday or vacation can awaken. It comes especially through the earth itself. That Promise fits perfectly with the deepest longing of our hearts—the longing for everything to be good. The experience of this “Promise” is one of summer’s greatest gifts to us. But few know what it means. Does it ever come true? That’s what our hearts long to know—does it ever come true? Why did God put this Promise in the earth, and in the human heart? Part of the answer is revealed in Romans chapter eight: The created world itself can hardly wait for what’s coming next. Everything in creation is being more or less held back. God reins it in until both creation and all the creatures are ready and can be released at the same moment into the glorious times ahead. Meanwhile, the joyful anticipation deepens (19-21). Paul believed that all creation was trembling with anticipation, because nature knows some great secret we do not. Jesus revealed the secret very clearly: “I assure you that when the world is made new and the Son of Man sits upon his glorious throne…everyone who has given up houses or…property, for my sake, will receive a hundred times as much in return…” (Matthew 19:28-29 NLT) When the world is made new. At the restoration of all things. This is the great secret of creation. This is the great hope of our faith. I now understand, some fifty years later, that the wooden bridge under the cottonwoods was filled with “a sense of meanings” and “charged with potency” because the Promise of the restoration of all things was coming to me through that place. It is coming to us in many ways; it is coming to us through the glories of summer. I share this in hope that you and I will begin to understand the whispers of the promise that are coming to us, that these gifts will fill our hearts with hope. “The Spirit of God whets our appetite by giving us a taste of what’s ahead. He puts a little of heaven in our hearts so that we’ll never settle for less” (2 Cor. 5:5). May summer whet your appetite. May it assure you completely of the Great Restoration that is nearly upon us. Love, John PS. Go to allthingsnew.com for a beautiful video of a talk I gave on the Great Restoration.
John Eldredge
Envy
This month, I'd like to pick up on a subject we are discussing on our podcast in May. It's proving to be very profound and very helpful to us, and a lot of our friends. The topic is: Envy. Let me begin with a question: What do the last presidential election, the rampant hatred we see in social media, the passion for justice, and the topic of envy all have in common? I believe part of the answer is, The Triumph of the Offended Self. How quickly offense occurs in this world we live in! When mankind chose against God at the fall, we exalted Self in the place of God. You’ll notice how seriously Jesus takes the matter when he said we must daily die to Self if we would be his followers, if we would be the sons and daughters of God. “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23). We don’t particularly like that part of the Christian invitation; notice the absence of any best-selling book entitled “Die to Yourself Every Day!” It’s the self-life, by the way, that doesn’t like the subject. Now to be clear, what I mean by “the self-life” is the part of us that during a conversation is waiting for our opportunity to speak, our moment to be asked how we are doing; waiting for our opportunity to tell a story. It's that part of us that finds it difficult to rejoice when others rejoice. It's that part of us that is so easily offended when we feel we have even been slightly wronged. The self-life is the breeding ground for envy. Dorothy Sayers wrote, It begins by asking, plausibly, “Why should I not enjoy what others enjoy?” and it ends by demanding, “Why should others enjoy what I may not?” Envy is the great leveler, if it cannot level things up, it will level them down; and the words constantly in its mouth are “my rights” and “my wrongs.” There is good reason envy has been listed among the Seven Deadly Sins for centuries. (This is a list compiled by thoughtful saints on those issues that are especially damaging to the soul.) In fact, envy is second on the list. Now, envy has two directions in our lives. First, there is envy that flows from within us. A good deal of research is emerging to demonstrate that those who spend more time on Facebook experience higher levels of envy (and unhappiness) than those who don't—or the simple reason that you are comparing your life to the happiness that is apparently available in the lives of your friends and acquaintances. I find it so tragic that the number one source of envy in social media is holiday photos. For some of us, simply seeing the joy of another human being is enough to elicit envy in our lives. What has happened to our culture is that we have lost the ability to admire anything that is greater or better or higher than ourselves? But friends, admiration is the language of the Kingdom of God. We celebrate that gifted musician even though we know we will never attain their brilliance. We celebrate that family, writer, leader, or athlete simply because of the glory of God that is reflected in them. We rejoice with those who rejoice. (Notice the difficulty of the older brother in the parable when he sees the Father’s lavish grace on his prodigal brother.) Envy cannot admire. Sayers goes on to say, “At its worst, [envy] is a destroyer; rather than have anybody happier than itself, it will see us all miserable together.” Which brings us to the other side of envy—the envy that comes our direction. It is a very damaging force, much more so than you may have realized. In fact, it is the warfare that envy releases in our lives that actually got us investigating the subject and led us to the podcast series. For not only does envy say “I wish I had what you do,” but it quickly degenerates into, “In fact, I wish that you did not have it since I cannot have it. You have too much.” Envy is a destroyer, and our enemy uses the open door of it as an occasion to come and steal the good things of our lives. Now, you may not think that you are the object of anyone's envy, but let me assure you, your enemy holds an enormous grudge against you and envies you deeply. He envies your position as a son or daughter of God. He envies your relationship with him. He envies the blessings of God in your life. He envies your eternal destiny of absolute happiness and joy. Sadly, many people also give way to feelings of envy (as the research on social media proves). They envy your home, marriage, or children. They envy your position at work, or the fact that you get to live in the city you do. They envy your health or bright personality. But most of all, we envy the blessings and gifts of God in others lives. Spiritual envy—envying the giftedness of another—is doing all sorts of damage in our souls, in our churches, and our Christian communities. It “partners” with the enemy to allow in division, and thievery; offense and backbiting; not to mention unhappiness. That’s why we wanted to shine some light on it. Our culture has embraced the very toxic idea that everyone should look and feel and have exactly what everyone else has. That is not how the kingdom of God works! But boy oh boy is it a breeding ground for offense—the Offended Self. We can choose something so much better—we can choose love! I hope you will tune into our four-part series on envy we offered this month (on the Wild at Heart podcast). You won’t regret it! In fact, this would be a great series to use to introduce the podcast to friends and family. Thank you for rejoicing with those who rejoice. Thank you for celebrating the goodness of God wherever it appears in this world! Love, John Download the May Newsletter Here
John Eldredge
Easter
Easter is already in the rearview mirror, but I thought it might be good to give a little more reflection to all that Jesus won for us through the Cross. Good Friday comes and goes so quickly, we don’t have the opportunity to reflect on all the Cross provides for us each new day. We can understand someone dying for a person worth dying for, and we can understand how someone good and noble could inspire us to selfless sacrifice. But God put his love on the line for us by offering his Son in sacrificial death while we were of no use whatever to him. Now that we are set right with God by means of this sacrificial death, the consummate blood sacrifice, there is no longer a question of being at odds with God in any way. (Romans 5:7-11, The Message) As the church has understood for more than 2,000 years, the Cross was not merely Jesus “entering into our suffering.” It was a sacrifice of incredible proportion, made necessary because of our sin. This is so important for us to name, because in our age the concept of sin has almost completely disappeared and what has replaced it are words like “brokenness” and “woundedness.” Just the other day a good man, a true disciple, was telling me a story of some egregious evil committed against him. In the next moment, he said, “They were just acting out of their brokenness.” This is the common spin, and it is partly true. But what is missing is the forthright naming of sin. If brokenness is all that we needed help with, Jesus certainly wouldn’t have had to go to the Cross. Now—you know we spend a good bit of time healing human brokenness here at Wild at Heart. All the more reason for us to give some reflection to the fact that Jesus went to the Cross for our sins, or we will lose our gratitude for it. And there is so much more. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.” (Galatians 3:13) Here again we have the clear view of Atonement—Jesus is judged so we wouldn’t be. But another dynamic is being described here. The Cross breaks the power of all curses. This too is so important to name at this time when so much envy, hatred judgment and cursing is taking place in social arenas. When someone judges you, when they pronounce words of hatred or judgment against you, those words have real effect. Both Testaments take blessing and cursing very seriously. “Life and death are in the power of the tongue” (Prov 18:21). So it is a great relief to bring the power of the Cross against those words and judgments spoken against us. Witchcraft is also on the rise in this pagan culture; many curses are being pronounced on Christians from the dark side. How wonderful that our God has provided the solution: we are able to bring the Cross of Christ against all curses and cancel them in Jesus name. Can you feel your appreciation of the Cross deepening as we name these things? Paul explains later in Galatians, through the Cross of Christ we are crucified to the world and the world to us: May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. (6:14) The Greek word used here for “world” includes the entire human family. The Cross of Christ changes every human relationship. In a world where so many relationships are unhealthy, where people try and control us or exert unholy authority over us, where people often attach their needs and longings to us, the Cross is our rescue. It is so helpful to pray the Cross of Christ into every relationship so that only what is holy and good can pass between us. And of course the Cross is what sets us free not only from the penalty of sin but from the very power of it: We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?...In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. (Romans 5:2-3,11) Anyone trying to live a whole and holy life knows the grief that comes—regularly—when we cannot seem to live beyond our sin and addictions. You must understand: the unholy trinity Scripture names as the world, our flesh, and the evil one conspire to undermine your character. In that swirling mess, it can feel like you want to (fill in the blank…yell at your kids, look at porn, envy your friend’s success, indulge bitterness, etc.) but what we must, must cling to is that we have died with Christ in the Cross; sin no longer has to rule over us. We have a choice! Which brings us to my last observation: the Cross was not only then, it is now. Every day. We do have a choice to make, and the essential choice we face every day is whether we will let the “self” life reign in us, or will Christ reign in us? By the “self” life I simply mean that part of us that wants to reign as lord of our lives. The first issue is never sin; it is what we do with our internal, natural inclination to play lord of our life. All the hatred and envy you see in social media—that is the “offended self” lashing out. When Jesus invites us to take up our Cross daily, he is not saying we have to crucify our every hope and desire. He is saying we must choose not to let “self” reign—neither in our internal nor external world. Christ is Lord of both. Alas—there is so much more to say but we are out of space. For more on the power of the Cross let me recommend: my book Free to Live, the “Daily Prayer,” the “Prayer for Breaking Curses,” and our audio resource on Soul Ties. You can find them on our app or website. Much love, John Download the April Newsletter Here
John Eldredge
March 2017 Newsletter
Over the years we have been sharing the joys of discovering lost treasures together. What a life-changing experience it has been to uncover the personality of Jesus! Or how about learning that we can hear his voice, and all the blessings that come to us as we actually walk with him? And what absolute relief is ours as we explore the healing available to us through Christ? In the spirit of recovering lost treasure, I want to point out this month something that has baffled me for some time: Whatever happened to the promise of reward? “I tell you the truth: at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man sits on his glorious throne…everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life.” (Matthew 19:28) Jesus was responding to a question Peter asked when he declared these bold promises: “We’ve given up everything to follow you. What will we get?” (19:27). Christ is neither alarmed nor offended by the question. He doesn’t tell Peter that service is enough, nor that virtue is its own reward. He quickly replies with the proclamation of the Great Renewal, and then—as though that were not enough (!)—goes on to assure the boys that they will be handsomely rewarded in the coming kingdom. It is a mindset almost entirely lost to our age. Who even talks about reward anymore? Who anticipates it? Expects it? Honestly, I have never had one private conversation with any follower of Christ who spoke of their hope of being handsomely rewarded. This isn’t good; it is a sign of our total bankruptcy. Reward is central to a kingdom mindset… “Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven.” (Matthew 5:12) “For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what they have done.” (Matthew 16:27) So do not throw away your confidence; it will be richly rewarded. (Hebrews 10:35) By faith Moses…chose to be mistreated along with the people of God rather than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. He regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as of greater value than the treasures of Egypt, because he was looking ahead to his reward. (Hebrews 11:24-26) “Look, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to each person according to what they have done.” (Revelation 22:12) Reward, reward, reward—it fills the pages of both Testaments. Saint Paul expected to be rewarded for his service to Christ, as have the saints down through the ages. Patrick, that mighty missionary to the Irish prayed daily, “In the hope of resurrection to meet with reward…So that there may come to me an abundance of reward.” It is our barren age that is out of sync with the tradition. C.S. Lewis wrote, If we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us. “The unblushing promises of reward,” stopped me in my tracks the first time I read it. I’ve never heard a contemporary Christian use it. Unblushing means boldfaced, unashamed; it means brazen, outlandish and unapologetic. Did you know the promises of reward offered to you in Scripture are bold, unashamed, and brazen? God seems to be of the opinion that no one should be expected to sustain the rigors of the Christian life without very robust and concrete hopes of being brazenly rewarded for it. Are you looking forward to your reward??? That pastor who serves a rather small, petty and thankless congregation for forty years, the man who works late hours visiting the sick and comforting the brokenhearted, the servant who is grossly underpaid and regularly berated by his own flock—what does he have to look forward to? Shouldn’t his reception into the kingdom be like that of a great Prince returning to his Father’s country, with lavish reward? Indeed, he will. Will not his kindness be rewarded? It will. Will not his longsuffering be rewarded? It will. In fact, every noble deed of his largely hidden faithfulness, every unsung and even misunderstood action of love will be individually and specifically rewarded (Matthew 25:35-36, Matthew 10:41-42). And so he shall be a rich nobleman in the kingdom of God. What about the believer who struggled under mental illness all her life, largely alone and almost completely misunderstood, clinging to her faith like a drowning woman clings to a rock while a broken mind tormented her daily? Should she not step into the kingdom like the Queen of an entire country? Indeed, she will. She will probably be granted a position dispensing wisdom and insight that heals the hearts and minds of her countrymen. O yes, rewards will be given out in the kingdom with great honor and ceremony. One of our great joys will be to witness it happen. When you think of all the stories of the saints through the ages, and all the beautiful, heroic, painful, utterly sacrificial choices made by those saints, the suffering, the persecution—how long will we enjoy hearing those stories that ought to be rewarded told, and then watching breathless as our King meets the specific situation with perfect generosity? The thought of it fills me with happiness even now. I have friends and loved ones for whom I want a front row seat to witness this very moment. Begin to allow your imaginations to go in the direction of reward. Your heart will thank you for it. Download the Newsletter
John Eldredge
February 2017 Newsletter
First, a big thank you from the team here at Wild at Heart. I reached out at the end of last year to ask for your support, and I wanted to tell you the result: We made our end-of-the-year budget, right on target, with a few dollars to spare! God is so playfully faithful to us, and you are so faithful too. I didn’t want to move on into the new year without saying thank you, so very much! Thank you. It’s already February. 2017 is off and running like a downhill skier on Red Bull. I want to share a series of encounters I had to get us into the topic of this letter... First, a friend shared with me how much he was enjoying a podcast by a thoughtful NPR commentator, and the nuggets of insight were impressive. A few hours later a different friend mentioned how much they were getting out of another podcast. I thought to myself, I’d better subscribe to those; they sound really good and I feel like I’m not keeping up with the trends. That afternoon, Stasi said something about some world news event she had just read about, and I thought, Wow—I am not keeping up on global happenings. I’d better do more of that, too. During a meeting the next day, someone makes a reference to a well-known ministry when everyone else at the table nods like they knew the story, and I’m wondering, Wow—I have no idea what is going on in the church world; I need to keep up. Meanwhile during the same meeting everyone was checking their cell phones for messages, updates, and news. That evening I finally listened to our own podcast—the one Stasi and Cherie Snyder did on trauma (I’m three weeks late)—and I found myself thinking, Gadzooks—I am not taking care of the unattended trauma in my soul and its lingering effects. Meanwhile, I am getting ready for another set of upcoming meetings with some leaders, and I feel I ought to be far more prepared with some keen insights on the age, the prophetic, how God is moving in the world, and how we therefore ought to be strategizing. The cumulative effect of all this—and I am describing a fairly benign and ordinary week—was to have a large part of me feeling woefully ill-informed, and grossly out of touch with all sorts of important matters. Shame was not far behind, followed by that scrambling we do to “get back on top of things.” Another part of me—a deeper, quieter part—meanwhile was pushing back, wondering, How in creation do these people have a life with God and care for their souls in the midst of this barrage of media input, global information, social analysis, prophetic teaching, ministry news, and not to mention minute-by-minute updates from their hundreds of Facebook friends? How does any human being care for their soul in a frenzied moment like ours? The simple, honest truth is...they don’t. It is beyond all practical possibilities. However, the ongoing deluge of intriguing facts and commentary, scandal and crisis, genuinely important guidance, combined with the latest insider news from across the globe, and our friends’ personal lives, gives the soul a medicated feeling of awareness, connection, and meaning. Really, it’s the new Tower of Babel—the immediate access to every form of “knowledge” and “groundbreaking” information right there on our phones, every waking moment. It confuses the soul into a state of artificial meaning and purpose, all the while preventing genuine soul care and life with God. Life with God...period. Who has time to read a book? Plant a garden? Let me say it again, because it is so counter to the social air we breathe: What has become the normal daily consumption of input is numbing the soul with artificial meaning and purpose while in fact the soul grows thinner and thinner through neglect, forced by the very madness that passes for a progressive life. I am not scolding; I am tossing a lifeline. The first draft of this letter went on to try and tell you how to care for your soul and have a genuine life with God—not to mention with your friends and loved ones—by giving you little tiny things you could squeeze into such a life. After twenty-four hours, I realized I was simply allowing the madness to go on ruling our lives. I was capitulating and then trying to work around it. And that is neither kind, nor loving. What I am going to say to you is that sincere followers of Jesus in every age have faced very difficult decisions—usually at that point of tension where their life with and for God ran them straight against the prevailing cultural ethos. The new Tower of Babel is ours. We have always been “strangers and aliens” in the world, insofar as our values seemed so strange and bizarre to those around us. We are now faced with a series of decisions that are going to make us look like freaks to the world. Choices like turning off Facebook every other day (or perhaps completely), never bringing our smart phones to any meal, conversation or Bible study, and cutting off our media intake so we can practice stillness every day. If we offer anything of value to you here at Wild at Heart, we offer care for the soul. And so for the sake of sanity and mercy I am going to ask a few questions... What are you going to do this year to save your soul from the madness that passes as “normal life?” How will you cultivate a life of beauty, goodness, and depth of soul? How will you send your roots deep down into the soil of God? The good news is, we actually have a choice. Unlike persecution, the things currently assaulting us are things we can choose not to participate in. What needs to go away in 2017 so that you can take your life back? Download the Newsletter
John Eldredge
I Remember
I woke this morning to my dogs calling me from their crates. Correction: I woke to Maisie, our two-year-old Golden calling to me from her crate. The occasional cross between a yip and a whine told me that I had fallen back asleep and had slept too long for her taste. I’d been up for some hours in the night woken by an anxiety that threatened. This past night though, I had recognized it for the temptation it was to take up a mantle of dark fear that was not mine to wear. I was too tired to wrestle with the spiritual assault. (That is what is was, friends. Even laden with some truth as to the circumstances of my life, it was a spiritual attack to entice me into the land of worry.) Too sleepy to corral my thoughts to the deeper truth of the faithfulness of God, I did not want to wake fully. I did not feel called to do so. This night, unlike too many other nights, I simply rolled over and said, “No,” and tucked my heart into God and continued to rest. I redirected my thoughts first to sweet memories, then to memories I wanted to make, and suddenly Maisie was calling to me. Surely it is well after 6:00 a.m. Sweet and poor girl, I looked at the clock and it was 8:00! I quickly got up to let both dogs out to run outside and take care of business. When I opened the door to release them to bound outside, a cold blast hit my face. It was a crisp cold. A winter cold. A cold that spoke of past snow and past stories. I recognized a smell that I hadn’t for years. Though the winter here is full of crisp, cold mornings, something in the wind or perhaps something in the night had awakened a stirring in my soul. I remembered that evocative smell, that feeling, that invitation to play. Suddenly I was eight years old and wearing my favorite blue and white jacket with fur around the hood. I was a little girl again, getting ready to go outside and discover the joy awaiting me. I hadn’t remembered that feeling or that jacket since I don’t know when. Sense memory is something else, isn’t it, showing up at the oddest of times whenever the whim hits it? The sense of smell accesses and evokes memories more than any other. This morning I was still in my jammies when I opened the front door and the longing to be eight years old again with a front door open before me to a world filled with wonder and unending discovery swept over me. Back then I had different choices. Maybe I’d go sledding with the neighbors. Maybe we’d build a snowman. Maybe I would simply enjoy walking solitarily through the snow, relishing the crisp sound of crunching whiteness beneath my feet. I’ve always liked times alone even as a child. My soul was filled with expectancy that morning so long ago. I did not know what the day held, but I reached out to it boldly with both mittened hands. I dashed out into the day not certain of what I would find but certain that it was worth finding. This morning, I remembered that feeling. I remembered the eager anticipation that defined my heart. I remembered answering the invitation to live expectantly with an affirmative. To live without fear. I chose that then and this very morning, I had the opportunity to choose it again. I had the opportunity to choose it in the middle of this past night, and I am going to have a hundred of opportunities to choose it today. I pray to choose it. I pray that I will allow the memory to have its way with my heart. I pray to become that hope-filled, expectant-of-good child again and for God to use it to cleanse me of cynicism, doubt, and fear—all thieves of the joy that is mine to know. I do not know what today will hold, but the fresh fragrance that enveloped me at the front door reminded me that I can be a woman of faith who welcomes it.
Stasi Eldredge