Eldredge Quotes & Sayings

Fuzzy and unspecific prayers see fuzzy and unspecific results. God — John Eldredge

Let God begin to rewrite your story. Invite him to show you your past through his eyes. Ask him to surface good memories you have forgotten. He would love to do it. There is healing to be had there. There is a replacing of regret with mercy. Though our past has shaped us, we are not our past. Though our failures and sin have had an effect on who we are, we are not defined by our failures or our sin. Though thought patterns and addictions have overwhelmed us, we are not overcome by them and we will never be overcome by them. Jesus has won our victory. Jesus is our victory. — Stasi Eldredge

So you can't demand the broken to live as if they were whole. Discipline is not the issue; apply discipline and you'll make it worse. What is needed is healing. — John Eldredge

Much of what we call our 'personalities' is actually the mosaic of our choices for self-protection plus our plan to get something out of the love we were created for. — Stasi Eldredge

Genuine holiness restores human beings; restored human beings possess genuine holiness. — John Eldredge

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

Every man is a warrior inside. But the choice to fight is his own. — John Eldredge

There is no shame here. The places where we still fear are simply the places we have yet to fully receive God's love. Only by his grace and in his love can we let our fear go. Let go and receive. Receive his dreams. Receive his love. It is an exchange of fear for desire. It is an exchange of death for life. There is no fear in love. And I can tell you this with certainty: God does not want you to live in fear. And he does want you to live. Don't be afraid. Just believe. — Stasi Eldredge

It's good to dream. We can't out-give God. We can't out-love him, and we can't out-dream him. — Stasi Eldredge

Her soul is Alive. And we are drawn to her. — Stasi Eldredge

Listen to your own heart and the hearts of the women you know. What is it that a woman wants? What does she dream of? — John Eldredge

Marriage is the sanctuary of the heart. You have been entrusted with the heart of another human being. Whatever else your life's great mission will entail, loving and defending this heart next to you is part of your great quest. — John Eldredge

Father, what did I miss here, in this stage? Did I know I was the beloved son? Do I believe it even now? Come to me, in this place, over these years. Speak to me. Do I believe you want good things for me? Is my heart secure in your love? How was my young heart wounded in my life as a boy? And Jesus, you who came to heal the broken heart, come to me here. Heal this stage in my heart. Restore me as the beloved son. Father me. — John Eldredge

All of us are partly living our story line the enemy offers us.
Most of us, perhaps, live in not a terribly evil place in the moralistic sense of the word. We simply live where busyness, or apathy, or struggle with circumstances that won't change occupies most of our energy. And the enemy is perfectly happy to leave us in such a place practicing our religion. — John Eldredge

Because she bears the image of God. She doesn't have to conjure it, go get it from a salon, have plastic surgery or breast implants. No, beauty is an essence that is given to every woman at her creation. — John Eldredge

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. — John Eldredge

Jesus said, "Do not throw your pearls to pigs" (Matt. 7:6). By this we don't think he was calling some people pigs. He was saying, "Look - be careful that you do not give something precious to someone who, at best, cannot recognize its beauty, or at worst, will trample on it." Consider your feminine heart and beauty your treasure, your pearls. — John Eldredge

You clean and organize; you demand perfection - did you ever wonder why? — John Eldredge

We are loved. Born out of love, into love, to know love, and to be loved. Yes, we were born into a fallen, sorry world, which is at the same time more lovely than any fairy tale. It is both. And in this beautiful, heartbreaking world, God - the eternal, omniscient, amazing One - loves human beings. Including you. Especially you. — Stasi Eldredge

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

God wants to live this life together with you, to share in your days and decisions, your desires and disappointments. He wants intimacy with you in the midst of the madness and the mundane, the meetings and the memos, the laundry and the lists, the carpools and conversations and projects and pain. He wants to pour his love into your heart and he longs to have you pour yours into his. — John Eldredge

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

When we are in the darkness, we begin to feel like we have always been there. But it is not true. David reminds himself that God has been faithful in the past; God will be faithful again. He urges himself to put his hope in God because the morning will come. — John Eldredge

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

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. — John Eldredge

Religion and its defenders have always been the most insidious enemy of the true faith precisely because they are not glaring opponents; they are impostors. A raving pagan is easier to dismiss than an elder in your church. Before Jesus came along, the Pharisees ran the show. Everybody took what they said as gospel - even though it didn't sound like good news at all. But we wrestle not against flesh and blood. The Pharisees and their brethren down through the ages have merely acted - unknowingly, for the most part - as puppets, the mouthpiece of the Enemy. — John Eldredge

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. — John Eldredge

I think everybody has somebody for them, and they're out there waiting for you somewhere. — Brett Eldredge

Worship is the act of the abandoned heart adoring its God — John Eldredge

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. — John Eldredge

You learn a great deal about the true nature of a person in the way they love, why they love, and, in what they love. — John Eldredge

The great divide lies between men as lovers and men as consumers. Does he seek her out, long for her, because really he yearns for her to meet some need in his life - a need for validation (she makes him feel like a man), or mercy, or simply sexual gratification? That man is a Consumer, as my friend Craig calls him. The lover, on the other hand, wants to fight for her - he wants to protect her, make her life better, wants to fill her heart in every way he can. — John Eldredge

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

How do we live in freedom? We live in freedom when we come to believe, know, receive, and embrace the boundless love of God for us - when we are captured by his goodness, his faithfulness, his honor, his sacrifice, his heart that yearns for us. Then we can dance for an audience of One. Because we are so completely loved. We are safe and secure in the love of God. Every moment of our lives. — Stasi Eldredge

And so the great battle begins in earnest: the battle for your heart, the battle to find a life worth living, the battle not to lose heart as you find a life worth living. — John Eldredge

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

A man whose identity flows out of deep validation doesn't wilt under criticism. He enjoys applause when it comes but frankly isn't desperate for it. He can walk away from work at five o'clock; he doesn't measure his success by how much money he makes. We grow into this man, to be sure; I'm not setting a new standard of perfection. But what I am describing — John Eldredge

We can be satisfied. We are loved, wanted, seen, delighted in, provided for, cherished, chosen, known, and planned on. We are set apart, believed in, invited, valued, of immeasurable worth, and blessed. — Stasi Eldredge

The theory of punctuated equilibrium, proposed by Niles Eldredge and myself, is not, as so often misunderstood, a radical claim for truly sudden change, but a recognition that ordinary processes of speciation, properly conceived as glacially slow by the standard of our own life-span, do not resolve into geological time as long sequences of insensibly graded intermediates (the traditional, or gradualistic, view), but as geologically "sudden" origins at single bedding planes. — Stephen Jay Gould

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. — John Eldredge

When it comes to helping another human being, you can treat the symptoms or you can treat the cause. Most people dabble in symptom management, and that is why most people don't seem to be getting better. — John Eldredge

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. — John Eldredge

If he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who have never known neither victory nor defeat. — John Eldredge

I'm well aware that it's life I need, and it's life I'm looking for. But the offer has gotten "interpreted" by well-meaning people to say, "Oh, well. Yes, of course ... God intends life for you. But that is eternal life, meaning, because of the death of Jesus Christ you can go to heaven when you die." And that's true ... in a way. But it's like saying getting married means, "Because I've given you this ring, you will be taken care of in your retirement." And in the meantime? Isn't there a whole lot more to the relationship in the meantime? (It's in the meantime that we're living out our days, by the way.) Are we just lost at sea? What did Jesus mean when he promised us life? I go back to the source, and what I find is just astounding. — John Eldredge

The beauty is that as you become more whole, you can become holier. And as you become holier, you can become more whole. — John Eldredge

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. — John Eldredge

The gift of presence is a rare and beautiful gift. To come - unguarded, undistracted - and be fully present, fully engaged with whoever we are with at that moment. — John Eldredge

Shouting is obvious; not talking to each other slips by. — John Eldredge

A woman who is striving invites others to strive. The message - sometimes implicit in her actions, sometimes explicit through her words - is, "Get your act together. Life is uncertain. There is no time for your heart here. Shape up. Get busy. That's what is important." She does not say, "All is well. All shall be well." Her fear doesn't allow it. She is withholding the very things her world needs. — John Eldredge

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

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. — John Eldredge

Our hope is that all is well because of Jesus and that all will be well because of Him. — John Eldredge

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. — John Eldredge

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. — John Eldredge

If strangers and strange sights can shake the world of children, it takes the people they know and love best to pull it out from under them like a chair. — John Eldredge

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. — John Eldredge

As Neil Postman said about the scientific view: In the end, science does not provide the answers most of us require. Its story of our origins and our end is, to say the least, unsatisfactory. To the question, "How did it all begin?", science answers, "Probably by an accident." To the question, "How will it all end?", science answers, "Probably by an accident." And to many people, the accidental life is not worth living. (Science and the Story That We Need) — John Eldredge

I never tell lies, but I am a savage. — John Eldredge

And in this beautiful, heartbreaking world, God - the eternal, omniscient, amazing One - loves human beings. Including you. Especially you. You are amazing. — Stasi Eldredge

Whatever isn't born out of deep confidence in God is sin. That includes our personality and our approach to life. — John Eldredge

How wonderful to discover that God has never been alone. He has always been Trinity - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God has always been a fellowship. This whole Story began with something relational. — John Eldredge

We don't need accountability groups; we need fellow warriors, someone to fight alongside, someone to watch our back. — John Eldredge

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. — John Eldredge

Making an album is a long process, but it's a fun process. — Brett Eldredge

The voice of Shame says, I basically hate me; I need to get rid of me. The voice of Discipline says, I've got to fix me, because me is not good. God says, I love you; let me restore you. — Stasi Eldredge

Why are so many people struggling with depression and discouragement? They've lost heart. Why can't we seem able to break free of our addictions? Because somewhere along the way, in a moment of carelessness or desperation, we gave our heart away, and now we can't get it back. — John Eldredge

Nothing is out of reach for Jesus. — Stasi Eldredge

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. — John Eldredge

All the stories we've been telling about the presence of an evil power in the world, all the dark characters that have sent chills down our spines and given us restless nights - they are spoken to us as warnings.
There is evil cast around us ... there is an evil force in this world. — John Eldredge

You don't want to be a king. Trust me. It is not something to be coveted. Only the ignorant covet a throne. Augustine didn't want the job because he knew what it would cost him, and he felt a profound inadequacy to the task. He wanted a quiet, simple life. But he accepted the role on behalf of others. Becoming a king is something we accept only as an act of obedience. The posture of the heart in a mature man is reluctance to take the throne, but willing to do it on behalf of others. — John Eldredge

Simone Weil was absolutely right- beauty and affliction are the only two things that can pierce our hearts. Because this is so true, we must have a measure of beauty in our lives proportionate to our affliction. No more. Much more. Is this not God's prescription for us? Just take a look around. — John Eldredge

The purpose of his life, death, and resurrection was to ransom you from your sin, deliver you from the clutches of evil, restore you to God - so that his personality and his life could heal and fill your personality. Your humanity, and your life. This is the reason he came.
Anything else is religion. — John Eldredge

God does not live in a perpetual state of disappointment over who we are. — Stasi Eldredge

Laying down what we want to protect or are afraid of losing or are terrified we will never have is not the same thing as losing those things. It is surrendering them. It is opening up our clenched hand around them and allowing God access to them and to us. It is actually saying yes to God for them. Yes to his plan. Yes to his way. It is believing that just as his ways are higher than the heavens are above the earth, so his way for the things we fear is higher. This God of ours is a God of life, of goodness. He is the God of the Resurrection. We lay down our fear. We pick up Jesus. He is the only way we can live beyond fear. He is the Way. — Stasi Eldredge

Paul says in Philippians 4:19, 'And my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus.' Our needs won't be met according to the destitution of the world or to the poverty of our own faith in the moment but according to the riches in Jesus. There's no one richer than him! — Stasi Eldredge

Sex can be such a stark barometer for a marriage. — John Eldredge

Permit me to bypass the entire nature vs. nurture "is gender really built-in?" debate with one simple observation: Men and women are made in the image of God as men or as women. "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them" (Gen. 1:27). Now, we know God doesn't have a body, so the uniqueness can't be physical. Gender simply must be at the level of the soul, in the deep and everlasting places within us. God doesn't make generic people; he makes something very distinct - a man or a woman. In other words, there is a masculine heart and a feminine heart, which in their own ways reflect or portray to the world God's heart. — John Eldredge

One of the great wonders of Christianity is that you were born into your times, to set your times aright. — John Eldredge

Fear in its most wicked, powerful form cripples our souls and warps the very fabric of our true hearts. — Stasi Eldredge

Only by walking with God can we hope to find the path that leads to life. That is what it means to be a disciple. After all
aren't we 'followers of Christ'? Then by all means, let's actually follow him. Not ideas about him. Not just his principles. Him. — John Eldredge

Hope is a fruit of proven character. — John Eldredge

The masculine heart needs a place where nothing is prefabricated, modular, nonfat, zip lock, franchised, on-line, microwavable. Where there are no deadlines, cell phones, or committee meetings. Where there is room for the soul. — John Eldredge

As the family is restored, the ministry of the household becomes stronger and stronger. Strong families mean effective evangelism. A powerful context for evangelism that is readily accessible to every family is the ministry of hospitality. Hospitality provides an opportunity to show that faith produces more than just talk. It produces works- expressions of love from the very place where love is learned- the Christian home. — Tom Eldredge

Most men spend the energy of their lives trying to eliminate risk, or squeezing it down to a more manageable size. — John Eldredge

No longer bound by fear, how high can we soar? How deep can we dive? How much delight can we experience? Yes, there will be sorrow too - it's a part of the deal - but life gets the final word. Life. Life always gets the final word. Every single time. Forever. Praise the Lord, O my soul; all my inmost being, praise His holy name! — Stasi Eldredge

Awakening and owning the dreams that God has placed in our hearts isn't about getting stuff or attaining something. It's about embracing who we are and who he has created us to be. In him. He is our dream come true, and the one true love of our life. But we can't love him with our whole hearts when our hearts are asleep. To love Jesus means to risk coming awake, to risk wanting and desiring. — Stasi Eldredge

When it comes to happiness, our soul is like a colander, a tire with a nail in it, our grandfather's memory. It feels like there is a homeless person inside of us, wandering around pushing a shopping cart. — John Eldredge

Often the hardest person to fight for is ... yourself. But you must. Your heart is needed. You must be present and engaged in order to love well and fight on behalf of others. Without you, much will be lost." Chapter 11 "Warrior Princess — Stasi Eldredge

For what shall we do when we wake one day to find we have lost touch with our heart and with it the very refuge where God's presence resides? a — John Eldredge

The Lover of our souls, the One who has pursued us down through space and time, who gave his own life to rescue us from the Kingdom of Darkness, has made it clear: He does not want to lose us. He longs for us to be with him forever. — John Eldredge

If it is true that an influx of doubt and uncertainty actually marks periods of healthy growth in a science, then evolutionary biology is flourishing today as it seldom has flourished in the past. For biologists collectively are less agreed upon the details of evolutionary mechanics than they were a scant decade ago. Superficially, it seems as if we know less about evolution than we did in 1959, the centennial year of Darwin's on the Origin of Species. — Niles Eldredge

We won't be perfect on this side of heaven. But Jesus is perfect. Always. We are becoming more holy and true. Jesus already is. His name isn't "Becoming." It is "I Am." Perfection isn't the goal. Jesus is. — Stasi Eldredge

Nature is not primarily functional. It is primarily beautiful. Stop for a moment and let that sink in. We're so used to evaluating everything (and everyone) by their usefulness that this thought will take a minute or two to begin to dawn on us. Nature is not primarily functional. It is primarily beautiful. Which is to say, beauty is in and of itself a great and glorious good, something we need in large and daily doses. — Stasi Eldredge

Thus we might not know we have a sage at the table, for he will remain silent while the "experts" prattle on and on. — John Eldredge

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

Life needs a man to be fierce - and fiercely devoted. The wounds he will take throughout his life will cause him to lose heart if all he has been trained to be is soft. — John Eldredge

We would like to picture goodness as being synonymous with safety. — John Eldredge

The first line grabs me by the throat. "Therefore we do not lose heart." Somebody knows how not to lose heart? I'm all ears. For we are losing heart. All of us. Daily. It is the single most unifying quality shared by the human race on the planet at this time. We are losing - or we have already lost - heart. — John Eldredge

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. — John Eldredge

When God creates Eve, he calls her an ezer kenegdo. 'It is not good for the man to be alone, I shall make him [an ezer kenegdo]' (Gen. 2:18 Alter). Hebrew scholar Robert Alter, who has spent years translating the book of Genesis, says that this phrase is 'notoriously difficult to translate.' The various attempts we have in English are "helper" or "companion" or the notorious "help meet." Why are these translations so incredibly wimpy, boring, flat ... disappointing? What is a help meet, anyway? What little girl dances through the house singing "One day I shall be a help meet?" Companion? A dog can be a companion. Helper? Sounds like Hamburger Helper. Alter is getting close when he translates it "sustainer beside him"
The word ezer is used only twenty other places in the entire Old Testament. And in every other instance the person being described is God himself, when you need him to come through for you desperately. — Stasi Eldredge