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.