John Eldredge devotional

jeanrnJan 30, 2012 05:21 AM

Created in Freedom to Be His Intimate Allies
God created us in freedom to be his intimate allies, and he will not give up on us. He seeks his allies still. Not religion. Not good church people. Lovers. Allies. Friends of the deepest sort.
I will give them a heart to know me, that I am the LORD. They will be my people, and I will be their God, for they will return to me with all their heart. (Jer. 24:7)
It is the most beautiful of all love stories. On the other hand, Kierkegaard's tale The King and the Maiden doesn't capture the cost the King will have to pay to ransom his Beloved. He'll have to die.
Have you noticed that in the great stories the hero must often die to win the freedom of his beloved?
William Wallace is slowly and brutally tortured for daring to oppose the wicked king. He is executed (upon a cross), and yet his death breaks the grip that darkness has held over Scotland. Neo is the Chosen One, faster and more daring than any other before him. Even so, he is killed-shot in the chest at point-blank range. His death and resurrection shatter the power of the Matrix, set the captives free.
Aslan dies upon the stone table for the traitor Edmund and for all Narnia. Maximus dies in the arena to win the freedom of his friends and all Rome. They are all pictures of an even greater sacrifice.
The Son of Man . . . [came] to give his life as a ransom for many. (Matt. 20:28)
Remember, God warned us back in the Garden that the price of our mistrust and disobedience would be death. Not just a physical death, but a spiritual death-to be separated from God and life and all the beauty, intimacy, and adventure forever. Through an act of our own free will, we became the hostages of the Kingdom of Darkness and death. The only way out is ransom.
(Epic, 66-67)

The Heart of God Is Good
The coming of Jesus of Nazareth was like the opening scenes of Saving Private Ryan. A dangerous mission, a great invasion, a daring raid into enemy territory, to save the free world, but also to save one man.
Jesus told a story like that in order to shed light on his own coming: "If a man owns a hundred sheep, and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go to look for the one?" (Matt. 18:12). In the midst of the great invasion, like the storming of the beaches at Normandy, God yet sets his eye on one lost soul. On you.
Historically speaking, Jesus of Nazareth was betrayed by one of his followers, handed over to the Romans by the Jewish religious leaders, and crucified. But there was a Larger Story unfolding in that death. He gave his life willingly to ransom us from the Evil One, to pay the price for our betrayal, and to prove for all time and beyond any shadow of a doubt that the heart of God is good. And that your heart matters to him, matters more than tongue can tell.
He has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. (Col. 1:13-14)
(Epic, 67-68)

Jan 25, 2012

Sin is a heart condition, not a thought action or deed.
It involves whatever keeps us from being united with God, whatever we’ve chosen to take his place because we believe that he is not enough.
We must honestly trust that his heart is good, that he is love and that we are the object of that love.
It’s all about the heart.

“Above all else, guard your heart.”

Jan 25, 2012

To simply say that Jesus is the answer is so.... so unsatisfying somehow.
What does he have to do with love anyway? Right?
You mean to say that this hole in my heart is for him? I thought it was for love, for romance.
Jesus is not about romance is he? Yes, yes, and yes!!! His story is the greatest romance story ever told.
How can that be? I mean, he is, well, Holy. He is untouchable. He is religious. Right?
As the Son of God, yes Holy, but also very much Wrong answer! Because he did set that aside.
Jesus is walking talking breathing flesh and blood, just like you and me, and he is also love incarnate.
Love more than any other romance or dream of fulfillment that anyone could imagine.
His story is about his heart. It’s about the loss of his beloved and the daring rescue to get her back.

The biggest lie that the church has swallowed is that Jesus is not really – like us; human, normal, real.
Oh it’s a subtle lie, to be sure. But a lie, an insidious lie nonetheless.
We’ve put Jesus on a sacred pedestal that makes him unreachable somehow.
And in doing this we’ve effectively put God back behind the veil and once again separated ourselves from Him even though He came to be with us.
What the heck? Didn’t anyone ever wonder about that? I mean, he came to be with us and now we’re pushing him away by making him ‘Holy’.
I don’t know about you but I think that’s kind of the opposite effect he was looking for.
Yet we are so lost that we are convinced it is better to hide from him than to believe in his love for us.
So we practice religion and try to kill our hearts.
How did we all become the Pharisees anyway? (the only ones that he ever had issues with if you recall)

So the battle rages, and the story continues. Heart seeking heart, love drawing love. Failure is not an option.
He is looking for those who still want truth. Those that have not given up.
Those who will believe their hearts and follow the desire that he placed there.
Because it will lead them to him.

If Jesus has not set your heart free and fulfilled that desire for the perfect love, then you don’t know Him.
You simply do not know him.
You may have read a book about him, understood it to a degree, assented to the ideals, and chosen to join the group and follow the rules.
But reading a book, gathering knowledge, joining a group, and following rules, does not make a relationship.
If knowledge were the answer, we would never have been kicked out of Eden.

All reverence for him that is due as a Holy God, but he set that aside to be with us...
I think that might be the biggest hint that we are important to him. Very important.
He was in heaven but his love for us was too great to allow the separation.
So he became a man and he came to us because we were captive in our own prison.
We had rejected him in favor of ourselves and our desires but we found we’d cut off our nose to spite our face.
And we have lived in a kind of limbo between fantasy and desire, and the painful reality of our desperate need and seeking fulfillment elsewhere.
Why oh why then do we continue to believe the lie and seek for another when his is the only love that is enough.

Paul said these things over and over in many ways, and until now it was only religious doctern and rhetoric to me. I didn’t get it.
I’m sorry, but I really hate religious doctern. Even those words I hate. Because what they are is separation from the reality of Love.

In rethinking this all, I have come to the conclusion that it’s good to worship love.
Not love – but – Love.
The Love.
His name is Jesus.
(by the way we can still have our love here and now with one another,,, but with him there really is a ‘happily ever after’)

Jan 25, 2012

So I’m listening to some beautiful music and my mind wanders. (imagine that)
Funny how we worship love. (I know I do, along with a whole lot of others)
I think that we have this in us and we don’t even know that we’re doing it.

Love songs, great love – the kind that has someone sacrificing their own life for another, willing to give up everything to be with the one you love, like in City of Angels.
Giving up eternity to be with her only to lose her anyway. The ultimate love tragedy. And he said it was worth it.
Hollywood. Are they the ones that initiate this ideal or are they simply reflecting the general consensus?
Because that's the lie.
That's the false hope all of us romantics have always clung to.
The idea that we simply had to find that one person who would be our everything and it would all be better. The ache would be gone. We’d have happily ever after.
And when it does not happen (as it never will) we conclude that we have just not found the right person.
In the beginning, Adam chose Eve (actually, the best thing in creation, the pattern all women would be cut from) - but she was not enough.
And when he chose her he put her into the bondage of an unreachable expectation to fulfill his need.
Yet she knew she could not fulfill it. She wanted to because she had the same need and so made it her goal to try and be his everything.
[just an aside here. I think this was the beginning of posing. Not believing we’re what we are meant to be so trying to be everything else]
Meanwhile both of them looking to each other for fulfillment and both of them knowing that as wonderful and perfect as their union was, it was not enough.
It was never meant to be. Their union was only to be played in concert with the ultimate union with God - and nothing else would ever work.
Yet for centuries now men and women have been doing the same thing.
(What is the definition of insanity again? Doing the same thing over and over and each time expecting different results?)
Seeking that ultimate intimacy and never finding it in another.
So then rebellion, for me....
I knew I could not be what was demanded of me, though I loved being pursued and loved, it made me angry and I rebelled.
I mean – Don’t put that on me!!! I’ll never measure up to that no matter what. It made me honestly hate men for a time, until my heart screamed so loud I could not ignore it any longer.

I’m sure the struggle for men is much the same.
Not able to be what they know they are expected and wanted to be, yet wanting so much to be her everything.
No wonder they get angry, become distracted, or just check out.

The greatest tragic love stories are all about this impossible fantasy.
The noble perfect man in search of the beautiful perfect woman to make her his queen.
The beautiful perfect woman pining away for her knight.
Part of us knows that this is what love is. Part of us believes that it could be possible.
But most of us know it isn’t possible between any two members of the human race of imperfect people.
Yet we desire it so greatly, that we still search, the simple, brave, or foolhardy among us do, anyway.
But most settle for far less and go on to live a life of heart medication of one sort or another to numb the pain of the reality that life is nowhere near our dream.
We give up. Hope is lost and life becomes a series of heart numbing affairs with whatever distraction we can find to hide us from our lovelessness.
It does not work doing this either.

Jan 21, 2012

Truth.
What good is life without it?
To live in false - anything - is not to live.
I never want to be left wondering how I could be found lacking.
Not lacking in deed, but lacking in desire.
If life is not seeking Truth, it is not life.

Jan 18, 2012

Well now I'm 57, 58 in May.
It's been a long time since I've been on here.
Lets see if I even want to do this any more....

update

Whew! what a week it's been.  My mom had to be admitted to the hospital and my workload quadrupled all on Tuesday!  It's a good thing that God is still on the throne!  I know He is because otherwise I'd really be crazy!!! hahaha!  Hope to be bringing mom home today, she is feeling better and ready.  Hope to get caught up at work in the next couple of days (or weeks?) too.
Blessings to all!