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| Walking with God: Talk to Him. Hear from Him. Really. | 
 enlarge | Author: John Eldredge
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Category: Book
List Price: $22.99
Buy New: $7.91
You Save: $15.08 (66%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  35 reviews
Sales Rank: 3218
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 240
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 8.6 x 5.7 x 1
ISBN: 0785206965
Dewey Decimal Number: 248.4
EAN: 9780785206965
ASIN: 0785206965
Publication Date: April 15, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
"This is a series of stories of what it looks like to walk with God, over the course of about a year." So begins a remarkable narrative of one man's journey learning to hear the voice of God. In Walking wtih God by John Eldredge, the details are intimate and personal. The invitation is for us all. What if we could hear from God . . . often? What difference would it make? All day long we are making choices. It adds up to an enormous amount of decisions in a lifetime. How do we know what to do? We have two options. We can trudge through on our own, doing our best to figure it all out. Or, we can walk with God. As in, learn to hear his voice. Really. We can live life with God. He offers to speak to us and guide us. Every day. It is an incredible offer. To accept that offer is to enter into an adventure filled with joy and risk, transformation and breakthrough. And more clarity than we ever thought possible.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 30 more reviews...
 Profoundly Challenging March 23, 2008
76 out of 81 found this review helpful
"It is our deepest need, as human beings, to learn to live intimately with God."
John Eldredge has been writing about walking with God for over ten years, since the publication of The Sacred Romance in 1997. His latest book, Walking with God, is his most deeply personal & may become his most controversial as well.
Walking with God is not structured as a typical book at all: instead, it is a written retelling and explanation of his own walk with God over the course of a year. It has no specific goal or direction; it is simply his life day by day, and how he saw God guiding and teaching him.
Interspersed with these personal experiences are explanations of his own worldview and approach to walking with God. Two core issues he spends a lot of time with are spiritual warfare and conversational intimacy with God.
Eldredge's view of spiritual warfare is that demonic attacks, both in the form of physical ailments and mental and spiritual clouding, are very real and very common, almost an everyday occurrence, and that it takes concentrated, specific prayer to overcome them. Eldredge's view of "conversational intimacy" is that God really can speak to us, to enlighten and guide us, and that we can learn to listen to His voice.
These paradigms are very foreign and even antithetical to most evangelical Christians. Eldredge fully realizes this, but does not try to build an elaborate structured case for his theology. After all, Eldredge is not a theologian at heart, but a storyteller. Consequently, I think he realized that he could be most effective in teaching his way of walking with God by telling stories, and not by trying to write a theological tome.
I actually am both theologian and storyteller. The theologian in me has always bristled at some aspects of Eldredge's theology, and yet the storyteller in me sees much truth and much goodness in it as well. Did I agree with all the theology in this book? No, I did not. Did I take page after page of detailed notes, being struck again and again by his honesty and insight? Yes I did.
Walking with God is a profoundly challenging book, one that I will re-read, meditate and pray over. I believe John wanted to create a book that would make people take a hard look at their definition of what it means to truly walk with God, and then show them a path to a richer and fuller life.
He succeeded.
 Can't Find God's Will This Way April 14, 2008
39 out of 67 found this review helpful
The book is is written in a rambling, journal-writing style that presents ideas as stories rather than in a more systematic presentation.It makes for an engaging read. But it's his approach to spirituality that worries me. He sees the Christian life being focused on three principles (p.165). First, the heart is central to living the Christian life. It isn't what you do for God as much as your loving Him with your whole heart. You can do religious things, but still not love God. I think this is right on the money.
Second, we are to have a conversational intimacy with God. By this he means asking God for a special revelation of his will. Since the whole Bible is full of examples of people hearing God's voice, we should do it also. You could make the same argument for walking on water or parting the Red Sea. He believes it is a skill that must be learned (pp.31-2). If you get it wrong, there could be tragedy (pp.3-4). He went on Friday rather than Saturday to get a Christmas tree and was in a car wreck because of his disobedience. If you don't ask enough questions you're in danger. He was bucked off a horse for not asking where to ride, not just "should I ride today"(pp.79-81). I come to the conclusion that we may never ask enough questions-there's always room for one more. His Bible reading locations are dictated by God (pp.43-4). "What would you have me read today?". "John" "Where in John?" "Ten". (Would God ever say 1 Chronicles?)
I see this as a non-Christian notion of divining God's hidden will that we must somehow coax out of Him. Rather than God revealing Himself in Scripture, Eldredge sees God keeping His will secret and only by mastering a technique of "hearing" do we understand it. God plainly gives us His Word, tells us to obey Him and then has us pursue the desires of our hearts. God isn't obligated to show us plans for the future. The Bible calls that divination and it is sin. God's answer to Job is that we will have no idea why He does what He does, but we can trust that He is in control. I do believe that God from time to time gives special revelation, but it is a rare exception. Paul had one dream of a person from Macedonia; it wasn't his normal lifestyle. He wasn't asking for guidance particularly-God broke in to tell him to change plans. Peter, in Acts 10, wasn't asking to be shown anything, but God needed him to do something that was outside the norm and so gave revelation at that point.
Finally, Eldredge believes in a inflated view of spiritual warfare. He seems to spend a lot of his day "binding foul spirits". You have to discern them by name, anything they're connected with, anyone who has randomly bumped into them, etc. (pp.170-176). He blames too many struggles on beings outside himself. Our sin nature is enough to help us fall, we don't need to identify demons. I don't take lightly that there are spiritual powers against us, but Ephesians 6 recommends standing and praying and using God's Word to combat them. It seems that Eldredge goes way too far.
J.I.Packer's Guard Us, Guide Us or Bruce Waltke's Finding The Will of God: A Pagan Notion are much better reads on this topic.
Wild at Heart for Everyone! March 26, 2008
14 out of 15 found this review helpful
John Eldredge may very well have reinvented a new and much needed genre of modern Christian literature. When much of recent Christian writings have left me wondering was the time spent reading it worth what I got from it, Walking With God never gave me such a concern! This is a true `page turner' that may help turn the page in your life!
John takes us on a journey with him throughout a year and sharing his walk with God. The startling and intriguing part was how close his walk relates to mine ... the struggles and issues ...
The beauty of this book is the guidance John is able to give on facing these issues and the solutions he found by walking and listening to the Spirit of God. He shows you the practical prayers and ways he was able to connect with God in a deeper way during his walk and I found it so easy to agree with the prayers and receive joy and peace in my heart. Every day that I opened the book it seemed to speak directly to something I was going through and I think this will be a transcendent truth for most readers.
What Wild at Heart did for men, Walking with God has the potential to do for families and communities.
 Insight Into One Man's Walk With God April 29, 2008
14 out of 16 found this review helpful
I've enjoyed several of John Eldredge's previous books, so I was looking forward to jumping into this one.
The good: he gives you a behind-the-scenes look at his conversations with God over a year's time. It's usually interesting to see what people are talking to God about and that's true here. There are multiple moments when his comments will remind you of things you've also gone through.
The bad: I felt he goes overboard in a couple areas. The first is that everything for him is a spiritual battle. I do believe in spiritual warfare, but that doesn't mean every little problem you encounter is demonic. The second is that he seems to be constantly finding that things bring up all these deep problems from his childhood or early adult life. Again, I know that's sometimes true, but is everything ultimately about why I had low self-esteem in junior high or similar issues?
Ultimately, he doesn't fulfill the book's subtitle. It's interesting, but not filled with the insights I was hoping for.
The Journey Continues March 26, 2008
11 out of 11 found this review helpful
It has been a number of years since I first cracked open a book entitled
"Wild at Heart". That day I began a journey into the Christian life I had
heard about but never fully experienced.
The writings and teachings of John Eldredge continue to bring me to places
of deeper intimacy with My Father. His works have served as an instrument
of healing, victory and freedom in my life. Walking With God continues to
take me down that path.
In this new chapter of the journey, J.E. shares with the reader some of
his intimate conversations with the Father. He allows us to "look over his shoulder" as he revisits from his journals the wisdom, counsel, and kindness of a loving God.
Intimacy with God has always seemed to be a major theme of his books. In Walking With God, this intimacy is exampled showing me places where I may have failed to allow God access. I believe that my prayer life will be deeply richened through this work.
As I read J.E.'s conversations with The Father, they are experienced as
coming from a Loving God Who is deeply concerned about our heart, but also about every little detail of our lives. My question is... why does this come as such a joyful surprise to me? Maybe I need to ask Him!!!
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