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Summary: It's actually alright to be me...
Review: This book restored a lot of my self-esteem. For the longest time I thought that I had to continuously try to be docile and peaceful, not to offend anyone, and to meld into society.But this book (and others, including Lawhead's Pendragon Cycle) helped restore my youthful desire for adventure and glory and the call of the wild. But perhaps I am predispositioned towards hiking and camping anyway. The hills are ever calling me, but just as loud is the cry of the sea...
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Summary: Wild at Heart -- Great book for men
Review: John Eldredge's Wild at Heart: Discovering the Secret of a Man's Soul, is the perfect book for any Christian male to read if he is seeking explanations of his nature. The book touches on man's natural desires (the healthy desires) of exploration, passion, and the feeling of being alive. It casts an entirely new light on the needs and wants of men, making their natural longing for adventure a positive virtue, and not a dangerous vice.
I am a seventeen year old boy, and I'm not sure if I would call myself a man, but this book has affected me nonetheless. The book interests me, because it successfully outlines a man's heart, and even gave me some personal revelations. Until now, I never fully understood how I should behave as a Christian male, but using references from Braveheart as well as the Bible, Eldredge explains how a man's life should be lived.
Most of the book concerns man's desire for danger and adventure. I can personally relate to this having caused enough mischief in my seventeen years to last a lifetime, but it shows males ways to explore without causing trouble. The author is a Christian, and he shows the reader how to exercise his need for exploration within the rules of the church, without becoming terribly boring. All men were created in God's image, so our natural desires should not be denied. They are not harmful in any way, they are actually Godly. Wild at Heart establishes excellent guidelines for any male, Christian or non-Christian, to model their life after. He uses entertaining stories from his past to grab the reader's attention, then administers meanings behind the stories that a man can't help but consider. I enjoyed this book thoroughly, and would recommend it to any man interested in the natural desires of his soul.
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Summary: From A Woman's Perspective
Review: This book is must reading for every Christian man, woman, father, son, daughter...well, you get the idea. As a never-married 30-something, I needed some Godly guidance on how to be a woman as God created me to be, and how to relate to Godly men as He intended them to be. Feminism and other postmodern thought has left us all completely confused as to what it means to be a man or a woman. Unlike a lot of women, I actually LIKE men as a species, and love what makes them the way they are. This book really helped me understand some of my stupid behaviors with men as a young woman. My dad is wonderful, but he rarely told me I was beautiful, so I rarely felt I was. Now that I am fully identified in Christ (and was before I read this book), I have a new appreciation for God's love for me. A great book for individual or group study. Warning: some of the journeys are painful. Don't bother if you are not interested in real change and growth!
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Summary: A man's field manual for life, best book ever.
Review: Underlying I was always searching for answers. There was also something under the surface, questions needing to be answered. In reading this book I had incredible breakthroughs with my family and relationships with women. Understanding why I operate they way that I do and that we are all dealing with the same things on a day to day basis. Thank you John Eldridge for sharing this book with the world, it truly has made an impact on my life, God Bless.
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Summary: A book of healing and finding a man's soul
Review: This book is somewhat controversial because it could be read as one which encourages macho-ism and feeding strictly on raw testoserone. However, I found that instead of that the author is emphasizing that we have a God given masculine strength of character which is ready to fight for Christ. In order to accomplish this, he delves into places that we, as men have hidden away for fear that we would be perceived as "wimpy", but in exposing these places, we allow a terrific healing to occur. I was personally healed of many things through the reading of this book, and I have a greater understanding of what it means to be a Christian man. Whether I choose to live my life on all of Eldredge's principles or not is my choice, but his voice is a refreshing one of clarity and boldness in a sea of church confusion towards the role of Christian man. A must read for any man, teenager, or woman.
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Summary: Eldredge hits the mark.
Review: I could not put this book down as I cried throughout the pages while reading the book. This book hits so many nerves of what it means for a man to be masculine as God would have him be while countering both the extreme super macho man and the feminized nice guy dad who has been made into a woman. For too long, groups like Promise Keepers have spread the lie that all Christian men must, in order to be seen as real Christians in God's eyes, be alot like the Ned Flanders character from the Simpsons and subscribe to many of the personal ideologies made corporate theologies propogated by ministers such as Dobson, Robertson, Falwell, and others where real Christianity is dictated by how much and how well you subscribe to the "Republican, feminized testosteroneless Promise Keeper, butterfly kissing dad, married to the stay-at-home mom who drives the home school bus minivan, calling themselves "single income" but the mom sells Avon, tupperware, vitamins, Amway, weight loss, and other MLM pyramid scheme products etc. at night, homeschool the seven kids who look like the Precious Moments Figurines living in the Thomas Kinckade gingerbread houses in the meadow next to the brook where the deer pants reminiscent of Little House on The Prairie" where the environment appears to be "sanitized", "isolated", and "overprotected". In fact, groups like Promise Keepers and 'so called Christians' like Dobson, Robertson, Falwell, etc. have labeled those who disagree with some or all of this concept in public, in forums, in the local church, etc. as "bitter", "heretic", "bigoted", "narrowminded", etc. Finally, someone has addressed and tackled the issue of feminized Christian men and has told us with Scriptural proof that it is ok to and is necessary to be aggressive without being rude and also have a battle to fight, an adventure to live, and a beauty to rescue.
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Summary: A+ ... Men Have Deep Hearts!
Review: Hello everyone - this book has sure stirred things up a bit in the world of book reviews! There are many good reviews of Wild at Heart so I will not waste your time repeating them here. This is life-changing material and will challenge you for years to come. What I want to point out is that this book is both God inspired, and a direct attack (intended or not) on the political correctness movement and the world's fundamentally evil nature. Lost non-Christians and Christians alike will say many illogical and unfounded "bad" things about this book and the ideas presented -- "posers" can twist arguments (including biblical references) in subtle ways - they do not do it on their own. There is a real spiritual battle resulting in many reviews that deride John Eldredge and his biblical perspective of man; do not hold this against the authors. "Read the book, the Field Guide, and listen to the Tape Series. Use your God given insight and intelligence and draw your own conclusions!" You owe it to yourself to discover the truth and not rely on someone else's opinion. . Thank you for your time. -Eddie
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Summary: Wild at Heart
Review: John Elderege has captured a "sound" in the Holy Spirit's work in our day that makes this volume a must read for any who want to be on track with Father's heart in this generation. It is most excellent! If I could give more stars, I would
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Summary: Why not?
Review: "They may be misplaced, forgotten, or misdirected, but in the heart of every man is a deperate desire for a battle to fight, an adventure to live, and a beauty to rescue. (pg 9 of Wild at Heart)" I don't agree with all of John Eldredge's theology, but I agree with him in that there is a sickness that has gripped men and women not only in today's churches, but in all of God's people throughout history. Eldredge does an excellent job in emphasizing that our only hope as children of God is to find our sure hope in Christ's righteousness, to more or less realize that we are indeed new creations created for the purpose of glorifying God with the entirety of our lives. I think that one of the detriments of the book is that much of it is devoted to the place and redemption of men without significant attention given to the Redeemer. In all honesty, before I gave the book an objective nod, I walked away feeling victimized by my family and society rather than seeing the severity of my own choices towards the detriment of sin and death. A few things to keep in mind while reading this book is that though we all may be victims, we are all victimizers as well. We are all sinners by nature and have, by our own volition, decided to walk away from what God has perscribed as righteous and to live in such a way to deny His very character. Furthermore, we ought not forget that the Lord has sovereignly ordained all circumstances in our lives for our good and His glory. Rather than blindly fighting a spiritual war with an earnest hatred rooted in the past, we need to learn from where God has placed us and run with perseverance the race that He has marked out ahead of us as His children. There is a very real battle to fight, we do so by the power of the Holy Spirit through the means of prayer and wielding the Word. There is an adventure to live. We were never promised earthly prosperity as followers of Christ, but suffering and disdain from others who would abhor the righteousness of God. There is a beauty to rescue. We ought to love relentlessly, and to give ourselves over the purity that God has set forth in the sweetness of His Word. However, we need not lose focus that the reason any of this is real is because God Himself is real, and that all things are consummated at the focal point of Christ. There is no other reality that has the significance of this fact, and if we try to find it in the pursuit of purpose, then we lose our perspective of the very essence of that same purpose. Ephesians 1:9-12 [NAS]
He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His kind intention which He purposed in Him with a view to an administration suitable to the fullness of the times, that is, the summing up of all things in Christ, things in the heavens and things on the earth. In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will, to the end that we who were the first to hope in Christ would be to the praise of His glory.
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Summary: Wild Men; Lovers of God
Review: I read this book just last night, and I was blown away by the insight John Eldridge has into the hearts of men. I loved how he used popular culture to speak back to men the very reason they look to these types of entertainment: because Men want to be brave, strong and ready to go where God will lead.The reason the author takes us back to childhood is because we MUST deal with the wounds that occured there in order to be healed by God and move forward, revived by the Spirit. I only gave four stars for one reason. There is some unclearness about "adam was created to be dangerous".. I'm not clear how it fits into the New Testement teaching that we are new creations in Christ, and that "dangerous" adventure men long for s/b led by the Father .. John just wasn't as clear as he could've been that the heart is led by God, and that following God is the adventure.. it's not until the last two chapters that he focuses on that. But it's worth a read, so many men in the church are told they're bad boys and need "accountability partners" yet no one, until "wild at heart", has told them how to and where to go to get healed, and that God IS an adventure that will satisfy them like a long cold drink of water in a very dry land!
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