52 Books in 52 Weeks, it's called. The challenge is simple: read a book every week for a year.
57. Waking the dead: the glory of a heart fully alive.
Though I was unmoved by the narrow Wild at heart, my friend Tim highly recommended this book, so I agreed to read it. Eldredge advances the argument that the life of Jesus actually sanctifies your heart, and so the belief that your heart is desperately wicked is a lie; and in fact, a chief aim of spiritual warfare is to recapture your heart from this lie so that you can experience life to the full. To this end, Eldredge recommends Four Streams, one of which is spiritual warfare and the others of which he details unremarkably. I felt like the central premise of the book was valuable- that we could do with a look at our self-loathing and begin to ask whether this is how God sees us. And Eldredge does a good job describing the ways in which our view of things plays into the Enemy’s schemes to keep us and those around us in bondage. Much of the “self-help” aspect of the book, though, I could do without. The verdict? Encouraging, not necessarily essential.
