Days away from finishing John Eldredge’s soon-to-be-released “Walking with God” and I felt pressed to include an excerpt.

He’s writing about how he recognized himself moving from a place of desire to need. So, he was going from an attitude of “I want this…” to an attitude of “I need this…” Eldredge’s thought is that once we move into that place, where we “need” something, that is when we begin to chase things one-by-one in hopes of finding satisfaction. He asserts that those things won’t deliver us true satisfaction.

Now this concept isn’t new. It’s taught often in the church. But as I read, I really resonated with a verse he referenced and the passage that followed.

And he told them this parable: “The ground of a certain rich man produced a good crop. He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’

“Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.” ‘

“But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’

“This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God.”

Luke 12:16-21

Eldredge’s writing which follows…

“The warning is not about cows on the hills and cash in the mattress. The dangerous turn of the soul described here is what happens in the fellow’s heart. I’ve arrived. Life is good. But not because he has found life in God. There is no greater disaster for the human heart than this – to believe we have found life apart from God. And this shift I’ve been describing – this coming to believe that what I don’t have but long for I actually need – is the opening stages of the disaster. For whatever reasons, we have come to believe that God is not enough.”

“And so, whatever else might be the reasons for our disappointments, there is no question that God uses them to draw us to himself. To wean our hearts from every other perceived source of life, so that we might come to find our life in him.”

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