309 Quotes by John Eldredge

Most messages for men ultimately fail. The reason is simple: 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.

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.

We don’t live in the Garden. We live far from Eden. Every life is full of heartaches. Every life, frankly, is unspeakably sad.

And so a man’s heart, driven into the darker regions of the soul, denied the very things he most deeply desires, comes out in darker places.

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.

Every song you love, every memory you cherish, every moment that has moved you to holy tears has been given to you from the One who has been pursuing you from your first breath in order to win your heart.

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.

Until a man learns to deal with the fact that life is hard, he will spend his days chasing the wrong thing, using all his energies trying to make life comfortable, soft, nice, and that is no way for any man to spend his life.

This is why the “apply some principles” approach to marriage improvement doesn’t work. So long as we choose to turn a blind eye to how we are fallen as men or women, and to the unique style of relating that we have forged out of our sin and brokenness, we will continue to do damage to our marriages.