BOOKNOTES: Wild at Heart – John Eldredge

Wild at Heart – John Eldredge

Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.
If you had permission to do what you really want to do, what would you do? Don’t ask how, that will cut your desire off at the knees. How is never the right question; how is a faithless question. It means "unless I can see my way clearly I won’t believe it, won’t venture forth."
We are in constant danger of being not actors in the drama of our lives but reactors, "to go where the world takes us, to drift with whatever current happens to be running the strongest."
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. Henry David Thoreau
All men die; few men ever really live.
That’s what we hold up as models of Christian maturity: Really Nice Guys. We don’t smoke, drink or swear, that’s what makes us men. Really now do I overstate my case? Walk into most churches in America, have a look around, and ask yourself this question: What is a Christian man? Don’t listen to what is said look at what you find there. There is no doubt about it. You’d have to admit a Christian man is…bored.
Life is a hypocrite if I can’t live the way it moves me.
God is a person of immense risks. No doubt the biggest risk of all was when he gave angels and men free will, including the freedom to reject him—not just once, but every single day.
This is every man’s deepest fear; to be exposed, to be found out, to be discovered as an impostor, and not really a man. The dream has nothing to do with acting, that’s just the context for my fear. You have yours. A man bears the image of God in his strength, not so much physically but soulfully.
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.
Two roads diverged in a wood and I, I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.
The price of our vitality is the sum of all our fears.
A man must have a battle to fight, a great mission to his life that involves and yet transcends even home and family. He must have a cause to which he is devoted even unto death, for this is written into the fabric of his being. Listen carefully now: You do. That is why God created you—to be his intimate ally, to join him in the great battle.

The most dangerous man on earth is the man who has reckoned with his own death. All men die; few men ever really live. Sure, you can create a safe life for yourself…and end your days in a rest home babbling on about some forgotten misfortune. I’d rather go down swinging. Besides, the less we are trying to "save ourselves" the more effective warrior we will be.