John Eldredge Quotes

Sin also carries on its war by entangling the affections and drawing them into an alliance against the mind. Grace may be enthroned in the mind, but if sin controls the affections, it has seized a fort from which it will continually assault the soul. Hence, as we shall see, mortification is chiefly directed to take place upon the affections.

A true Christian is one who has not only peace of conscience, but war within. He may be known by his warfare as well as by his peace.

You live in a world at war. Spiritual attack must be a category you think in or you will misunderstand more than half of what happens in your marriage.

The mind is either at war with God or it is being renewed. There is no middle ground.

In the heart of man, there is a constant conflict between the flesh and the spirit.

The saddest symptom about many so-called Christians is the utter absence of anything like conflict and fight against spiritual apathy in their Christianity. They eat, they drink, they dress, they work, they amuse themselves, they get money, they spend money, they go through a brief round of formal religious services once or twice every week. But of the great spiritual warfare - its watchings and strugglings, its agonies and anxieties, its battles and contests - of all things they appear to know nothing at all. Let us take care that this case is not our own.

What seems conceit, bad manners or cynicism is always a sign of things no ear have heard, no eyes have seen. You do not know what wars are going on down there where the spirit meets the bone.

Into every soul, however purged and fenced, evil appears to have as much freedom of entrance as God Himself.

Our epoch is a time of tragic collision between matter and spirit and of the downfall of the purely material world view.

Little by little he came to recognize the difference between the spirits that agitated him, one from the enemy and one from God.

The mediation by the serpent was necessary. Evil can seduce man, but cannot become man.

Christianity is a battle not a dream.

Beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and devil are fighting there, and the battlefield is the heart of man.

The struggle between God and man breaks out in everyone, together with the longing for reconciliation... God does not love weak souls and flabby flesh. The spirit desires to wrestle with flesh which is strong and full of resistance. It is a carnivorous bird which is incessantly hungry; it eats flesh and, by assimilating it, makes it disappear.

We cannot know what prayer is for until we know that life is war.

War has a deeper and more ineffable relation to hidden grandeurs in man than has yet been deciphered.

Your soul is oftentimes a battlefield, upon your reason and your judgment wage war against your passion and your appetite.

I never think of physical fighting. It's always spiritual. Fighting is spiritual.

Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh, for the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would.

I think the Bhagavad Gita is about both the forces of light and the forces of darkness that exist within our own self, within our own soul; that our deepest nature is one of ambiguity. We have evolutionary forces there - forces of creativity, and love, and compassion, and understanding. But we also have darkness inside us - the diabolical forces of separation, fear and delusion. And in most of our lives, there is a battle going on within ourselves.

You do not know what wars are going on down there where the spirit meets the bone.

Loving people is the highest level of spiritual warfare that we could ever do

Spiritual Christians look upon the world not as a playground but as a battleground.

Let our hearts admit, “I am poor and weak. Satan is too subtle, too cunning, too powerful; he watches constantly for advantages over my soul. The world presses in upon me with all sorts of pressures, pleas, and pretences. My own corruption is violent, tumultuous, enticing, and entangling. As it conceives sin, it wars within me and against me. Occasions and opportunities for temptation are innumerable. No wonder I do not know how deeply involved I have been with sin. Therefore, on God alone will I rely for my keeping. I will continually look to Him.

One great remedy against all manner of temptation, great or small, is to open the heart and lay bare its suggestion, likings, and dislikings before some spiritual adviser; for, . . . the first condition which the Evil One makes with a soul, when he wants to entrap it, is silence.