Tag Archives: walking with god

John Eldredge

1 Christ is All, 9 TV & Movies/Books & Entertainment, , ,

I REALLY like him.  I use and regularly share The Daily Prayer with friends and family and young women I disciple.  I haven’t read everything he writes, but Walking with God revolutionized me…after The Sacred Romance did (my dad requested I read a copy he’d underlined thoughts in, such treasure!)…after The Journey of Desire did a number of years earlier.  :)

The Journey of Desire: Searching for the Life We Always Dreamed of The Sacred Romance: Drawing Closer to the Heart of God

I did a whole Sacred Romance thing with my friends on this very blog.

Walking with God: Talk to Him. Hear from Him. Really.

And certainly have mentioned Walking with God …a little.

Then, this!

I hadn’t been to his site for awhile, but the other day I went to catch up and found that he’d posted an entry on his blog on December 26, 2011 called “I am Bethlehem.”  {See it here}

And I had, if you will recall, posted an entry in December called “I am the Nativity.”  {see it here}

I am smiling as if something wonderful just happened (silly, I know).  I want to say something like “John Eldredge and I think alike,” as if!  But it is just one of those things.  Sorta similar, but not.  One written by some one who is read by millions and one who is read by 7 or 8 on a good day.  *insert self-deprecating laugh

I re-read the post I did and I certainly recognized my words are so influenced by his writings.  What I wrote just came tumbling from my heart in the early dark hours of a winter morning.  But they are also words born of the people, speakers and authors whose revelations have pierced my very soul, line upon line, precept upon precept.  And John Eldredge is way up there on my favs list as an author!  So what felt so powerful and unique to me that day, and for days following, was merely a summary of years of the walk with God and the voices which have spoken in to and impacted my life.

His post was classic John Eldredge.  Mine was a tumbling sensory something-or-another.  They were different.  Yet both inspired by fresh of understanding during the Christmas season of 2011.

And I just kind of think it is cool because I am such a fan.  And I feel kind of validated in a very silly way.  Because God will reveal Himself to us: wildly famous writer, or not so much.  So we shouldn’t be surprised when He does.   But can I just {very indulgently} say I am kind of giddy that God did that?

That’s all.  Just smiling because the same God that spoke to John Eldredge spoke to me.  And to you, too.  You know it is true!

Why I Still Blog

1 Christ is All, 2 Mi Familia, 4 Home & Garden/Food & Seasons, 9 TV & Movies/Books & Entertainment, Stuff I Actually Think, ,

Still blogging after all these years.   { Thought Collage,  est. 2006/11 }

 

What I hope the blog {as autobiographical as it may be} is accomplishing:

From Frederick Buechner’s words in Now and Then (via John Eldredge’s Walking with God)

“There is something more than a little disconcerting about writing your autobiography.  When people have occasionally asked me what I am working on, I have found it impossible to tell them without an inward blush.  As if anybody cares or should care…

But I do it anyway.  I do it because it seems to me that no matter who you are, and no matter how eloquent or otherwise, if you tell your own story with sufficient candor and concreteness, it will be an interesting story and in some sense a universal story…

If God speaks to us at all other than through such official channels as the Bible and the Church, then I think that he speaks to us largely through what happens to us, so what I have done in theis book…is to listen back over what has happened to me – as I hope my readers may be moved to listen back over what has happened to them – for the sound, above all else, of His voice…[For] His word to us is both recoverable and precious beyond the telling.”

This is the record of the sound of His {unwavering, thoroughly faithful} voice in my life. 

I am leaving it here for Tara, Dave and Hunter Magoo, for Steph, Tristan and the Kelley kids (Gavin, Guinivere and Gemma May), for Tredessa, for Rocky, Jovan and the girls (Averi and Amelie Belle), and for Stormie and the blessed add-ons ;p and to all the rest to come and for all those ever-after who come from them.

We proclaim to you what we ourselves have actually seen and heard so that you may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. We are writing these things so that you may fully share our joy.

1 John 1.3-4 NLT

NOTE TO:  Stephanie, Stefane and Kimberlee, Tredessa and Stormie, Ellie, Mary and Sarah, Heather and Denise: L O V I N G the chance to hear your hearts and walk this season-of-the-soul with you!

See the visual record on my new HOME MOVIES page

Walking with God

1 Christ is All, 9 TV & Movies/Books & Entertainment, Stuff I Actually Think, , , , ,

OK-just because he is one of the best-loved and most prolific writers in Christendom, and just because The Journey of Desire  was my favorite book read in 2004 and just because I spent 6 months reading and writing and loving The Sacred Romance  and experiencing an amazing “summer of love” because of it and my friends and I blogged about it all year this year – don’t think that authomatically makes me some kind of big John Eldredge fan.  Because I am not an Eldredge groupie.  Or maybe I wasn’t.

But I have just finished reading (2 weeks ago) the BEST book (it WILL be my “book of the year”) and it just happens to be by John Eldredge.  And I seriously wish some one else, everyone else, would read it, too, and get it and get into conversation with me about it. 

Walking with God – Talk to Him.  Hear from Him.  Really.   That is the name of the book.  I picked it up from the library on a whim, thinking I’d browse through quickly because there was no time to read it.  But the day I got started, I was in all the way.  I spent a week reading it (was the bronchitis a gift??), took 27 pages of handwritten notes and have now requested it for Christmas, because, I plan to read it again and write in it and underline and highlight and learn some more.

Here is how it is described on the jacket: 

“This is a series of stories of what it looks like to walk with God, over the course of about a year.”

“So begins a remarkable narrative of one man’s journey learning to hear the voice of God. In Walking wtih God by John Eldredge, the details are intimate and personal. The invitation is for us all. What if we could hear from God . . . often? What difference would it make?

All day long we are making choices. It adds up to an enormous amount of decisions in a lifetime. How do we know what to do?  We have two options.  We can trudge through on our own, doing our best to figure it all out.

Or, we can walk with God. As in, learn to hear his voice. Really. We can live life with God. He offers to speak to us and guide us. Every day. It is an incredible offer. To accept that offer is to enter into an adventure filled with joy and risk, transformation and breakthrough. And more clarity than we ever thought possible.”

John Eldredge basically shares his personal journaling with us, the things he faces and considers and learns throughout the course of a year.  Thus, no chapters or formulaic divisions.  What he learns about intimacy with God or joy and how essential it is, the spiritual warfare in which he engages, the agreements he breaks with the enemy and the growth in prayer and understanding of the power of the completed work of Jesus on the cross and the deliverance available through the blood of Jesus – these are not segregated, sectioned off revelations, but the interweaving of them throughout the course of the year.  Here a little, there a little, as God taught Him, interacted with him, talked to him.  Really.

This is the kind of book every parent should leave behind for their children: the record of the faithfulness of the hand of God in our lives in the day in and the day out.  Here is what I learned, no-am still learning.  Here is what God did on this day.  Here is the battle I repeatedly face.  Here is how I am overcoming.  John Eldredge opened the pages of his journal and shared these things in this book.  And even told how he is instilling them in his sons, even now.

The book: It’s conversational.  It’s powerful.  I felt like I was sitting there talking to the author directly.  For me, it was timely and insightful on being whole and holy, and the importance of joy.  It reminded me to recognize the enemy’s work against me and how I have made subtle agreements with the enemy that have given him a foothold in my life, but also gave me the courage, the prayers and the understanding to break those things, resist the devil and watch him flee!  It exposed busyness again, a recurring struggle for me, and awakened me to ways the enemy has kept me in bondage, but how I do not have to stay there.  Period. 

Really good read.  Really can’t wait to tear into my own copy again.  Really loving what I learned about prayer and the new power in my personal prayer life.  See http://www.walkingwithgod.net/pdf/DailyPrayer.pdf to get you started.

Hearing from Him so much more…Jeanie

NOTE TO SELF: Increase the conversation with the God of the universe who does actually involve Himself in what concerns me.