Subtitle: How God's Goodness Frees Us From Everything That Plagues Us
Author: John Eldridge
Eldridge is a New York Time Bestselling author who penned Wild at Heart, one of the most exhilarating and empowering books for Christian men. He heads a ministry called Ransomedheart.
Here is an excerpt from the book:
"It may seem strange at first because I don't believe most folks think of holiness as an utter relief. Hard perhaps, boring if we're honest, necessary like flossing, a level of spirituality we might attain to one day. But a relief? Look at it this way: Ask the anorexic young girl how she would feel if she simply no longer struggled with food, diet, exercise--if she simply never even gave it another thought. Ask the man consumed with jealousy how he would feel if he woke one day to discover that all he once felt jealous over was simply gone. Ask the raging person what it would be like to be free of rage or the alcoholic what it would be like to be completely free from addiction. Take the things you struggle with and ask yourself: "What would life be like if I never even struggled with this again? It would be an utter relief. An absolute utter relief." This is the essence of Eldridge's discussion on holiness.
Some noteworthy quotes from the book are as follows:
...the assumption of the New Testament is that you cannot become whole without becoming holy; nor can you become holy without becoming whole. The two go hand in hand.
...the way a person handles others is the acid test of his true nature.
What angers us is almost always some version of You are making my life even harder than it already is. Get out of the way. Not Jesus. He welcomes intrusion.
Blind technical obedience to rules and laws is obviously therefore not holiness.
The Big Lie of sin is that it is inevitable.
....when you neglect the sanctifying of the heart, you set yourself up for a fall.
In the Church, we've come to assume that power and influence come from skill, from expertise. We live in a world that worships expertise. But the Kingdom of God operates on entirely different values. One life totally given over to God is far more powerful than a hundred with gifting and expertise.
The book is just about 175 pages in length, the fonts are quite large, and so are the spaces between lines and in margins. So, it should not be a difficult book to read. Bottomline: it's a good read on the topic. If you're interested in the topic of holiness, Jerry Bridge's Pursuit of Holiness is an excellent book to read after this one.
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