John Eldredge Quotations

Where a man's strength and courage is tested most is in the way that he treats women - the way that he loves.

I'm married. I have three children. I have a mortgage to pay. The plumbing breaks and the yard needs trimming. However, what my wife and children need most from me is my passion for them.

Falling in love with God is the most important thing a person can do.

Most Christians are still living with an Old Testament view of their heart. Jeremiah 17:9 says, 'My heart is deceitfully wicked.' No, it's not. Not after the work of Christ, because the promise of the new covenant is a new heart.

Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself, 'What makes me come alive?' Because what the world - a wife, a child - needs is men who have come alive.

The early Celtic Christians called the Holy Spirit 'the wild goose.' And the reason why is they knew that you cannot tame him.

Men want a battle to fight, an adventure to live, and a beauty to rescue. That is what is written in their hearts. That is what little boys play at. That is what men's movies are about. You just see it. It is undeniable.

It was men who stopped slavery. It was men who ran up the stairs in the Twin Towers to rescue people. It was men who gave up their seats on the lifeboats of the Titanic. Men are made to take risks and live passionately on behalf of others.

Validation comes to us in two ways: through trials we overcome, and through the words of older men.

Most of us live in a fog. It's like life is a movie we arrived to 20 minutes late. You know something important seems to be going on. But we can't figure out the story. We don't know what part we're supposed to play or what the plot is.

You get guys around a campfire, and they start telling their stories. That's the fellowship that they want to be in.

It takes great courage to be vulnerable. It takes enormous strength to be a real woman.

Just like sunshine affects others, when the life of Jesus invades your life, you become a loving person. The effect on others is amazing.

What strikes me about Jesus is that he is a remarkably true person; he never changes his personality to fit in with whatever crowd he finds himself. He is simply himself, and he never plays to his audience.

Reading the Gospels, without the personality of Jesus, is like watching television with the sound turned off,

'Wild at Heart' simply came out of my journey as a man and then my work with men.

We have a Father, and He cares about our internal world - issues of motive, issues of fear, issues of validation.

We've made elevator music of Jesus Christ. We've made Him the most boring, bland, blah person; and He was the most revolutionary man.

There are a lot of good men out there who just need a little direction and leadership in order for them to offer what they have to young men and boys.

The scripture is filled with examples of genuine masculinity; you could mine David's story for probably a year by itself. And we have to get the masculinity of Jesus back. Not the pale-faced altar boy, but the man that made a weapon and cleared the temple, who boldly cast out demons and calmed the raging sea.

If only Jesus' followers shared his personality. That one shift alone would correct so many of the ridiculous and horrifying things that pass for popular Christianity.

The modern era has brought up immense conveniences but at what price. The human heart is desperate for something more than a quicker serving of popcorn.

Christianity has basically communicated to men that the reason God put you on this Earth is to be a good boy. Mind your manners, be a nice guy. That's soul killing!

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

When a woman forsakes her vulnerability because she's been hurt or because she lives in a dangerous world or doesn't want to be used, she loses something essential about being a woman.

To be in theater you have to be a kind of psychologist, for you're always trying to understand character and motives.

I have a call to speak, to write, to do sort of deep-heart surgery in people's lives.

Whatever their age, most men have never received true fathering.

I wasn't looking for religion; I was looking for a world view.

'Wild at Heart' created a set of expectations maybe, partly, on my part, certainly on my publisher's part, but also in the world out there, that my next books would be as remarkable.

You know the phrase 'Jesus laughed' isn't ever used in the Gospels. So, most people walk away with the idea that Jesus is a pretty serious guy, pretty sour faced most of the time, pretty upset at what's going on around Him.

We're told that you can have a relationship with Jesus, but most Christians don't experience Jesus personally like that. They just don't. We honor Him. We respect Him. We worship Him. We don't experience Him and His personality like we do the people we love the most in our lives.

I started working at Focus on the Family doing debates and media and cultural studies.

A woman wants to be romanced. She wants to be an essential part of a great adventure; she wants a beauty to unveil. That is what little girls play at, and those are the movies women love and the stories that they love.

The more that you come to know Jesus for who He really is, loving Him is not a problem.

It was only after 20 years of being dunked in the religious culture that I got caught up in 'religion.' I had no exposure to Christianity as a child. I was not raised in a Christian home. I became spiritually hungry in high school.

It takes enormous strength to be a real woman.

In ancient African cultures, a young man was not considered a full member of the tribe, an elder, a man. He couldn't marry and he couldn't own land until he had killed a lion. It was symbolic.

For the most part, boys are very physical. It's not enough for them to be told they have what it takes and they have greatness. They have to discover for themselves. We learn by doing. The doing has to be somewhat physical.

The guy who sits in front of the television is unengaged. That man is a bad man.

Contentment can only happen as we increase desire, let it run itself out towar its fulfilment, and carry us along with it.

Eternal life is not primarily duration but quality of life, "life to the limit.

Most of what you encounter when you meet a man is a facade, an elaborate fig leaf, a brilliant disguise.

But a wound unfelt is a wound unhealed.

Mary had Joseph. Esther had Mordecai. Ruth had Boaz. We will not become the women God intends us to be without the guidance, counsel, wisdom, strength, and love of good men in our lives.

Have you thought about His (God) handling of the gospel? God needs to get a message out to the human race, without which they will perish...foreve r. What's the plan? First, He starts with the most unlikely group ever: a couple of prostitutes, a few fishermen with no better than a second-grade education, a tax collector. Then, he passes the ball to us. Unbelievable.

An intimate encounter with Jesus is the most transforming experience of human existence. To know him as he is, is to come home. To have his life, joy, love, and presence cannot be compared. A true knowledge of Jesus is our greatest need and our greatest happiness.

A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut his way out, needs to combine a strong desire for living with a strange carelessness about dying. He must not merely cling to life, for then he will be a coward, and will not escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide, and will not escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it; he must desire life like water and yet drink death like wine.

Every man carries a wound. I have never met a man without one. No matter how good your life may have seemed to you, you live in a broken world full of broken people.

I don't write anything that I haven't lived. In terms of integrity, you have to write what you live. And if you write beyond what you live, it is theory. And theory is not helpful. It is just not.

You would not ask someone with a broken arm to swim the English Channel, so you cannot demand that the broken to live as if they were whole.

How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone and narrow to be everything to someone? No, a woman’s function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute. (What’s Wrong with the World)

A man needs a much bigger orbit than a woman. He needs a mission, a life purpose, and he needs to know his name. Only then is he fit for a woman, for only then does he have something to invite her into.

Am I really a man? Have I got what it takeswhen it counts?

Caring for your heart is also how you protect your relationship with God... [The heart] is where we commune with him. It is where we hear his voice. Most of the folks I know who have never heard God speak to them are the same folks who live far from their hearts.

We are created for adventure, and if we cannot find one, we start blowing things out of proportion so it feels like we have one.

Aggression is part of the masculine design, we are hardwired for it.... Little girls do not invent games where large numbers of people die, where bloodshed is a prerequisite for having fun. Hockey, for example, was not a feminine creation. Nor was boxing. A boy wants to attack something - and so does a man, even if it's only a little white ball on a tee.

A true knowledge of Jesus is our greatest need and our greatest happiness.

To find God, you must look with all your heart. To remain present to God, you must remain present to your heart. To hear his voice, you must listen with all your heart. To love him, you must love with all your heart. You cannot be the person God meant you to be, and you cannot live the life he meant you to live, unless you live from the heart.

The real you is on the side of God against the false self

Instead of asking, 'What should a woman do—what is her role?' it would be far more helpful to ask, 'What is a woman—what is her design?' and, 'Why did God place Woman in our midst?

We don't see clearly because we don't see with the eyes of our heart.

My heart matters to God. My heart has always mattered to him...

So long as man remains no real threat to the Enemy, Satan's line to him is 'You're fine'. But after you do take sides, it becomes 'Your heart is bad and you know it'.

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.

Don't climb on that, don't break anything, don't be so aggressive, don't be so noisy, don't be so messy, don't make such crazy risks. But God's design - which He placed in boys as the picture of Himself - is a resounding yes. Be fierce, be wild, be passionate.

When winter fails to provide an adequate snow base, my boys bring their sleds in the house and ride them down the stairs. Just the other day, my wife found them with a rope out their second-story bedroom window, preparing to rappel down the side of the house. The recipe for fun is pretty simple raising boys: Add to any activity an element of danger, stir in a little exploration, add a dash of destruction, and you've got yourself a winner.

Desire reveals design, and design reveals destiny.

Adventure, with all its requisite danger and wildness, is a deeply spiritual longing written into the soul of man.

He is the playfulness of creation, scandal and utter goodness, the generosity of the ocean and the ferocity of a thunderstorm; he is cunning as a snake and gentle as a whisper; the gladness of sunshine and the humility of a thirty-mile walk by foot on a dirt road.

Of course, none of this can happen for us until we give our lives back to God. We cannot know the joy or the life or the freedom of heart I've described until we surrender our lives to Jesus and surrender them totally... We turn, and give ourselves body, soul, and spirit back to God, asking him to cleanse our hearts and make them new. And he does. He gives us a new heart. And he comes to dwell there, in our hearts.

You live in a world at war. Spiritual attack must be a category you think in or you will misunderstand more than half of what happens in your marriage.

Story is the language of the heart.

Henri Nouwen once asked Mother Teresa for spiritual direction. Spend one hour each day in adoration of your Lord, she said, and never do anything you know is wrong. Follow this and you'll be fine.

Truth be told, most of us are faking our way through life. We pick only those battles we are sure to win, only those adventures we are sure to handle, only those beauties we are sure to rescue.

The culture of women in the church today is crippled by some very pervasive lies. "To be spiritual is to be busy. To be spiritual is to be disciplined. To be spiritual is to be dutiful." No, to be spiritual is to be in Romance with God. The desire to be romanced lies deep in the heart of every women. It is for such that you were made. Are you ARE romanced, and ever will be.

A man does not go to a woman to get his strength; he goes to her to offer it.

Desire, both the whispers and the shouts, is the map we have been given to find the only life worth living.

God endowed you with a glory when he created you, a glory so deep and mythic that all creation pales in comparison.

You can't fight a battle you don't think exists.

Moses does not encounter the living God at the mall. He finds Him (or is found by Him) somewhere out in the deserts of Sinai, a long way from the comforts of Egypt... Where did the great prophet Elijah go to recover his strength? To the wild. As did John the Baptist, and his cousin, Jesus, Who is led by the Spirit into the wilderness.

Every boy, in his journey to become a man, takes an arrow in the center of his heart, in the place of his strength. Because the wound is rarely discussed and even more rarely healed, every man carries a wound. And the wound is nearly always given by his father.

There is something else I am after, out here in the wild. I am searching for an even more elusive prey . . . something that can only be found through the help of wilderness. I am looking for my heart.

It is the thoughts and intents of the heart that shape a person's life.

We are not inviting—we are guarded. Most of our energy is spent trying to hide our true selves, and control our worlds to have some sense of security.

The most dangerous man on earth is the man who has reckoned with his own death. All men die; few men ever really live.

Without the anticipation of better things ahead, we will have no heart for the journey.

I wasn't mean; I wasn't evil. I was nice. And let me tell you, a hesitant man is the last thing in the world a woman needs. She needs a lover and a warrior, not a Really Nice Guy.

We are made in the image of God; we carry within us the desire for our true life of intimacy and adventure. To say we want less than that is to lie.

There is something about human nature that just doesn't want to face the reality that we live in two worlds. We live in the physical, material world where we have jobs, read books, and go about our business. And we live in a spiritual world - and that is a world at war.

The meaning of our lives is revealed through experiences that at first seem at odds with each other--moments we wish would never end and moments we wish had never begun.

Eve is a life giver; she is Adam's ally. It is to both of them that the charter for adventure is given. It will take both of them to sustain life. And they will both need to fight together.

A man must have a battle to fight, a great mission to his life that involves and yet transcends even home and family,

You probably can't imagine there being a glory in your life, let alone one that the Enemy fears. But remember -- things are not what they seem. We are not what we seem. You probably believed that your heart was bad too. I pray that fog of poison gas from the pit of hell is fading away in the wind of God's truth. And there is more. Not only does Christ say to you that your heart is good, he invites you now out of the shadows to unveil your glory. You have a role you never dreamed of having...

For after years of living in a cage, a lion no longer even believes it is a lion . . . and a man no longer believes he is a man.

somehow we have overlooked the fact this treasured called the heart can also be broken, has been broken, and now lies in pieces down under the surface. When it comes to habits we cannot quit or patterns we cannot stop, anger that flies out of nowhere, fears we cannot overcome, or weaknesses we hate to admit--much of what troubles us comes out of the broken places in our hearts crying out for relief. Jesus speaks as if we are all brokenhearted. We would do well to trust His perspective on this.

We think you'll find that every woman in her heart of hearts longs for three things: to be romanced, to play an irreplaceable role in a great adventure, and to unveil beauty. That's what makes a woman come alive.

Deep in his heart, every man longs for a battle to fight, an adventure to live, and a beauty to rescue.

We have no idea who we really are. Whatever glory bestowed, whatever glory is being restored, we thought the whole Christian thing was about... something else. Trying not to sin. Going to church. Being nice. Jesus says it is about healing your heart, setting it free, restoring your glory. A religious fog has tried to veil all that, put us under some sort of spell or amnesia, to keeup us from coming alive.

A man's calling is written on his true heart, and he discovers it when he enters the frontier of his deep desires.