John Eldredge
16 min read ⭑
“My passion right now is to, as a spiritual father, guide people into a daily experience of God that is so rich they find themselves falling in love with him more. I want them to find the richness of the experience, the intimacy, the communion, healing damaged places in their souls and giving them the strength and guidance they need to navigate their lives.”
Author of the bestselling book “Wild at Heart,” John Eldredge has a deep-rooted desire to see people live in God’s kingdom and encounter his heart — and recover their own in the process. As a counselor and teacher, he and his wife, Stasi, launched the Wild at Heart ministry in 2000 in Colorado Springs. Since then, the ministry has helped numerous people experience a more intimate connection with Jesus, and John has gone on to write and cowrite several more books, including “The Sacred Romance,” “Get Your Life Back,” “Resilient” and his latest, “Experience Jesus. Really.”
Today, John’s getting honest about his fascination with healthy food and how touching random stones, shells, leaves and bodies of water on his daily walks helps him reconnect with God. You’ll also hear how he deals with the pressures of being misunderstood in the limelight and a truer, more dependent way of seeking God’s guidance as a ministry team.
The following is a transcript of a live interview. Responses have been edited and condensed for brevity and clarity.
QUESTION #1: ACQUAINT
The meals we enjoy are about so much more than the food we eat. So how does a “go-to” meal at your favorite hometown restaurant reveal the true you behind your web bio?
I actually went to the very first Chipotle. The first Chipotle was started in Denver by someone who was just experimenting to see if a healthy burrito place would work. This was 30 years ago. Chipotle is now my go-to, which reveals I’m pretty nerdy when it comes to what I put in my body. I’ve been into the health and wellness thing for a long time. I like the healthy aspect of Chipotle. I like the vibe. I love to sit outside, and I also really like the restaurant’s simplicity. I’m not a linen tablecloth guy. So that reveals a piece of who I am. And then once in a while, I’ll hit a wall or I just can’t go to Chipotle anymore, and I will have to fast from it for a while, because there’s one right down the street from our offices, and it’s too easy to go there.
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QUESTION #2: REVEAL
We’ve all got quirky proclivities and out-of-the-way interests. So what are yours? What so-called “nonspiritual” activity do you love engaging in that also helps you find essential spiritual renewal?
My go-to is walking the dogs every day. I walk them down into this open space. That’s not the quirky part. The quirky part is what I’m doing right now as I record this interview — I am holding a shell that I picked up on a beach in Ireland. When I’m walking in the open space, I’m always touching stuff. The tree bark. A stone. I’ll walk along with a stick in my hand. And if I find any form of water, like a puddle or little spring, I will put my hands in it because somehow it is grounding for me. Those of us whose work is mostly with screens, such as writers and the like, have to get out and feel things.
I have a collection of stuff on my desk right now — little stones, shells and things that ground me. I like to touch things, hold things, come back to nature and smell stuff. For instance, I’ll break open a juniper branch or a eucalyptus tree, and I will rip the leaves open and just smell them. It is profoundly spiritual because it’s bringing me back into reality, and nature is saturated with God. It’s not just screens, right? It’s those of us who live in our heads. When your work is primarily intellectual or creative work, you get a little too much into your mind. And so to come back into your body is critical. Essential oils, green tea and things like that bring me back into my body.
QUESTION #3: CONFESS
Every superhero has a weakness; every human too. We’re just good at faking it. But who are we kidding? We’re all broken and in this thing together. So what’s your kryptonite and how do you confront its power head-on?
Controlling the narrative of what people think of me. That’s my kryptonite. I hate being misunderstood. When you’re a public figure, people only get glimpses of you online or on stage or in a moment in a podcast — even my own team, to be honest. I love the opening of “A Tale of Two Cities” (and I love Charles Dickens in general). In that book, the opening scene shows all these lit windows in the houses, and then Dickens takes you into those rooms and talks about how within every one of them is a heart and a mystery to the heart that is lying next to it.
That sense of loneliness combined with the yearning to be correctly perceived and understood causes me to pull away from most public things these days. When you ask about kryptonite, my first thought is any large Christian gathering. Those environments are so hard for me, especially if I’m one of the guys on stage. It’s toxic for me because it’s so hard to be true, so I’ve pulled back from a lot of that. But even in human relationships, I think I’m aware of the kryptonite of loneliness and misunderstanding and being misunderstood.
What’s not helpful is trying to control the narrative of what people think of me. To paraphrase Jesus’ words: “John, you’ve got to let that go. You’re spending the wrong amount of energy and that’s not the same thing as loving.” I’m trying to focus a little more on loving and a little less on controlling.
This then takes us into the deep question: what do you do with that? As Dickens pointed out in London at night, profound loneliness has shaped my history, so I’m finding new ways to invite Jesus into it. Until I was aware that I was trying to address and fix profound loneliness, I had no idea why I would put so much energy into it. I could feel the energy and urge to add more words, explain myself and defend myself, but I didn’t know quite why there was so much energy behind it until I discovered the deep loneliness beneath it.
QUESTION #4: FIRE UP
Tell us about your toil. How are you investing your professional time right now? What’s your current obsession? And why should it be ours?
I have a very deep desire to see people well, and it’s a big reason I became a therapist. Then after becoming a therapist, I became an author to help people toward a deeper life in God — because I know that life will restore their soul. I have a pretty deep conviction right now that people who are pursuing Christian faith are massively disappointed with the results in terms of direct experiential encounters with God. We have the content (and there’s phenomenal content out there). You can read the church fathers online and listen to the greatest teachers, but the content doesn’t translate into experience; it doesn’t translate into intimacy.
I think we have an overdeveloped left-brain approach to our faith. We tend to focus on reason and analysis, and we were discipled by the internet. But my passion right now is to, as a spiritual father, guide people into a daily experience of God that is so rich they find themselves falling in love with him more. I want them to find the richness of the experience, the intimacy, the communion, healing damaged places in their souls and giving them the strength and guidance they need to navigate their lives.
This is what I’m all about, and it’s why I wrote my latest book, “Experience Jesus. Really: Finding Refuge, Strength and Wonder through Everyday Encounters with God.” I have always been a pretty big fan of the Christian mystics. I think they hold the key to our current dilemma of being left-brain dominant and worn out by the amount of technology and by how much we live in our heads and outside our bodies. I think the mystics point the way. They found a way to experience God and find actual nourishment in him. So my passion right now is trying to usher people into that.
The problem is that you can’t force people to stop approaching time with God as if they’re checking a box and moving on. You have to wait until their pain, frustration, disappointment, anxiety and fear for their future compel them. If someone isn’t thirsty, you can’t compel them to drink. You wait until the thirst is there.
In the meantime, though, you can tell stories of what is available. You might run into people who have a very unique and very deep life in God, and they’ll leak a couple stories out to you. A friend of mine would text me and say, “I had the sweetest time with Papa this morning. I was sitting on his lap.” Part of me would go, “What the heck is that?” But another part of me would say, “I want that kind of experience.”
Through my book, I’m also hoping to lure the soul home. All I’m doing is inviting people home into what they were created for. I think if we can allure through stories past and present and talk about what the mystics experienced, then while people are checking the box, they may get a whiff of enchantment. It’s as if the wardrobe door is open — do you want to step through it?
QUESTION #5: BOOST
Cashiers, CEOs, contractors or customer service reps, we all need grace flowing into us and back out into the world. How does the Holy Spirit invigorate your work? And how do you know it’s God when it happens?
The Christian journey, and probably the journey of any soul, is one of simplicity to complexity and back to simplicity. For many believers, particularly people who come to Christ as adults, there is so much joy and wonder in a simple life with God in those early stages. God exists in us. Holy cow. I’m talking to him every day. And then we get into the stages of complexity which are, frankly, necessary. You need to learn a little bit about your theology and why you believe what you believe. You need to know a little bit about the functioning of the human soul and how it interacts with God and that sort of thing. But then we swing back, I hope, as we mature into one of the simplest lessons of all — that you were never meant to pull it off on your own. You were never intended to take the burden upon yourself and get it done.
When I’m writing, I worship and pray a lot because I want to be in communion. I don’t want to share primarily the ideas of John Eldredge. That’s not particularly helpful to anyone. I want to be in a place of communion so that the Holy Spirit is infusing my humanity, my mind, my heart, my memory, my creativity and we are co-creating something. I don’t mean to diminish the role of an artist. All of my faculties are involved, but I know I need the Holy Spirit, so I deliberately seek his help.
A number of years ago, we had a beautiful young man join our staff who had come from a very well-known global ministry. He was astounded at what took place in our staff meetings. The way he described it later was: “At every other place where I’ve worked, including these big ministries, they make their plans and ask God to bless them. So their prayers are primarily at the beginning of the meeting. They are very short, such as ‘Lord, please guide us.’ Then at the end of the meeting, they pray, ‘Would you please bless these plans?’ But you guys stop and ask God what you’re supposed to be doing. You look for direct guidance. This is new for me.” I love that story because he was blown away by the fact that there was a whole different way to approach seeking God’s help. That’s really important for anyone in creative work. It’s not just throwing yourself at the canvas. There must be an intentional seeking of the Holy Spirit, the Lord Jesus and our heavenly Father in the creative moment and in the work itself. So that’s me these days. I worship, I pray, I listen, and when I feel the striving, when I feel I’m cutting out that intentional seeking, I pause. I step back and ask the Holy Spirit, “Why am I cutting it out? Where did I lose track of our partnership?”
In worship, we’re telling God who he is to us and who we are to him, which is exactly what you do in your book. As a result, even if nobody ever read it, it would still have tremendous value as a form of worship in and of itself just between you and God. Would you agree?
That’s a very beautiful thought, and I think it is true. I think it is true because if we are writing, building or starting companies primarily to be read or noticed, that’s not a good motive. That’ll mess you up, actually, because then you start building, creating or adapting your company to the applause. That’ll mess up your vision and your integrity. The poet Gerard Manley Hopkins says he is squeezing the essence out of this insight into creation. Here’s what he says in “As Kingfishers Catch Fire”:
As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw fláme;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I do is me: for that I came.
In other words, we write or build or teach or heal because it is what God created us to do and not because it will bring us income or cure our loneliness or win us the place of influence — and therefore, it is worship. When creation does what it does, it is worship. The psalms say the trees clap their hands just in their being. Think of all the great works.
Digressing for a moment, here’s something creative people need to know, and every human soul needs to know: One of the joys of heaven will be the uncovering of all of the hidden works and the enjoyment of them, which you didn’t get to experience in a broken, often very hostile world. The beauty and fulfillment that your calling will never ever find in this world. Your calling will only be fulfilled in the coming kingdom where the whole project is put back on track. We will reign with him forever, meaning we’re going to finally be able to live out what we were always meant to live out, and we will be able to enjoy it fully. So even if a book was never read by another soul, all that will be uncovered in the kingdom and sort of resurrected and celebrated. I think people need to know that because it’s very, very rare that your calling even reaches a partial fulfillment in this life.
QUESTION #6: inspire
Scripture and tradition beckon us into the rich and varied habits that open our hearts to the presence of God. So let us in. Which spiritual practice is working best for you in this season?
I’m going to use this as an opportunity to first remind us, together, why we do these things. When Dallas Willard wrote his book on the spiritual disciplines, he called it “The Spirit of the Disciplines” because it’s not primarily a book about what you ought to do (although he does talk about the disciplines). Instead, he mostly talks about the why, and the why changes everything. So to remind folks, your soul is created for a union with Christ, and it does not work apart from union. Now, most people have not been discipled in this. Your soul is created for a living union with Jesus, and out of that union flows love and strength and healing. It reminds me of Leanne Payne’s beautiful line, “The soul is healed through union with Christ.”
So I’ll talk about the things that I do and love right now, but we have to talk about the why first. Why do you read Scripture? Why do you worship? Why do you serve at the soup kitchen? Why do you fast? Why do you pray? First and foremost, it’s because you are seeking to heal your union with Christ. The world erodes our union with Jesus every single day. The pace of life, the barrage of content, the heartache, the horrible in the world. So whatever practices we pick up, I just want to kind of collectively remind us that we’re doing these things to repair and deepen our union and to deepen it in such a way over time that your communion with Christ is the vast, deep well of your life. It’s the center and everything else yields to it. If you don’t have this, you don’t go to the movie that night or you pull out of the project and close your laptop at 8 p.m. because you’ve got to come back to union.
So my go-to practice right now is what I call the prayer of descent, and I just nicknamed it that, but it is the practice of inner communion with Christ in the heart. So it’s in our heart that Jesus now dwells, and it is therefore in the heart that Jesus must primarily be sought. So this is what I do; it’s the prayer of inner communion, the dropping into my heart to find Jesus and to be with him and love him and enrich the union. Then in those times, he is able to say things, heal things. He’s able to correct the imbalances of my soul or address my anger or my fear. But it all takes place because of the inner communion. So for me, the go-to right now is the prayer of descent.
QUESTION #7: FOCUS
Looking backward, considering the full sweep of your unique faith journey and all you encountered along the way, what top three resources stand out to you? What changed reality and your heart?
What I call the second conversion in my life was the awakened heart, the realization of the importance of the inner life. Larry Crabb’s “Inside Out,” which was hugely influential in the 1980s, helped me begin to understand the inner world. That was absolutely massive for me. Building on that, going to counseling and dealing with my childhood trauma was life changing for me. I don’t know how any human being can move forward without addressing their deep heartache and even fragmentation that comes through heartache and trauma. So those two things were an absolute epiphany for me.
Secondly, way back in the day, a friend of mine walked into the shop where I was working and handed me a stack of books that were part of “The Complete Works of Francis A. Schaeffer.” He said, “I think you would like this.” I had absolutely no Christian upbringing. I was not raised in a believing home. I had only been to church once in my life for a funeral. I came to Christ during the great revival of the 1970s (which you can see in the film “The Jesus Revolution”). I was in Southern California while Keith Green was ministering and all that was going on there. But I needed a worldview. I knew because I wasn’t looking for a religion; I was looking for the truth. I knew if I found it, it would have to be true across all of life — the arts, the sciences, human relations. So I picked up the works of Schaeffer and began to read through them, and I thought, Holy smokes, here it is. C.S. Lewis’ beautiful line goes, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” Schaefer and C.S. Lewis helped me see everything else in light of the revelation of the gospel and of Christendom, which provided a foundation that I think continues to inform everything I do today.
We all have things we cling to to survive or even thrive in our fast-paced, techno-driven world. How have you been successful in harnessing technology to aid in your spiritual growth?
I’m going to give two. The first is the Jesuit app, Pray As You Go. I really enjoy that. The second is evening worship. This is how we close our day. We find some quiet worship that truly turns our attention again to Jesus and worship before bedtime, taking communion and saying our prayers. I’m already looking forward to it and it’s only 10 in the morning.
QUESTION #8: dream
God’s continually stirring new things in each of us. So give us the scoop! What’s beginning to stir in you but not yet fully awakened? What can we expect from you in the future?
I am just entering the stage of life we would call “the stage,” and I am loving it because the world is famished for spiritual mothers and fathers. I’m really intrigued by what God wants to do with me at this stage. I can see that there’s a big horizon, and I can feel the invitation to step into it fully, but I don’t know how that’s going to change my public presence. I do these Friday videos in which I pull out my phone and record a message. They’re not for the public, and they don’t go on social media; rather, they go to people looking for a spiritual father. I try to offer that kind of fathering in these Friday videos. We started doing it on a whim, but man, they have proved to be one of the things getting the greatest response in our work. And so I’m really curious about how to be a spiritual father in a world of technology going forward. I don’t have the answer, but I’m really curious about that.
John brought up a healthy point earlier: if we’re going to pursue spiritual disciplines, it’s essential we keep why we do them in the forefront of our minds and hearts. After all, it’s so easy for us to fixate on what we can see, measure, and achieve as opposed to the heart behind it.
Even the prophet Samuel fell into this trap. When he was looking among Jesse’s sons for one to anoint as the next king, he learned a powerful lesson about how God sees vs. how man sees: “But the Lord said to Samuel, ‘Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart’” (1 Sam. 16:7, ESV).
We normally think of this verse in the context of how we judge others, but we can also apply it to how we perceive ourselves. Do we feel more godly when we do certain things for God, like go to church, speak up in Bible study, or pray long prayers? Or are we fixing our eyes on the ultimate goal: relationship with Jesus?
John Eldredge is an author, counselor, teacher and president of Wild at Heart, a ministry devoted to helping people discover the heart of God, recover their own hearts in God’s love and learn to live in God’s kingdom. John directed a theater company in Los Angeles for several years before moving to Colorado to teach at the Focus on the Family Institute. After earning a master’s in counseling, he worked as a private counselor before launching Wild at Heart in 2000. John and his wife, Stasi, live in Colorado Springs and have three sons, two golden retrievers and two horses.
