The Ransomed Heart: A Collection of Devotional Readings [Hardcover]

John Eldredge (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 4, 2005

For millions of people, reading the writings of John Eldredge has been a deep and profound experience, generating a hunger to integrate his ideas and insights into their daily lives. Meeting that need in an innovative way, The Ransomed Heart features 365 daily readings gleaned from John's best-known works, including Wild at Heart, Captivating, Waking the Dead, The Journey of Desire, The Sacred Romance, and Epic. More than a daily devotional, this volume is a portable library that will prompt readers to soulful reflection and deeper intimacy with God.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Readers who enjoyed Eldredge's popular works Wild at Heart, Waking the Dead and Epic will be thrilled with this attractive devotional, which takes key passages from Eldredge's six books and presents them in a digestible daily format. The 365 readings run only a paragraph or two and feature Eldredge's trademark conversational style. Although Eldredge has been criticized for writing the same basic book several times, in this compilation that weakness is an asset, because the excerpts have an interior consistency and coherence one doesn't often see. There are some great nuggets to chew on: from "The Journey of Desire" passage: "For most Christians, heaven is a backup plan. Our primary work is finding a life we can at least get a little pleasure from here. Heaven is an investment we've made, like Treasury bonds or a retirement account, which we're hoping will take care of us in the future sometime, but which we do not give much thought to at present." The devotional closes with three prayers that have helped Eldredge in his Christian journey.
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Thomas Nelson (October 4, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0785207066
• ISBN-13: 978-0785207061
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #732,558 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

John Eldredge is an author (you probably figured that out), a counselor, and teacher. He is also president of Ransomed Heart, a ministry devoted to helping people discover the heart of God, recover their own heart in his love, and learn to live in his Kingdom. John grew up in the suburbs of Los Angeles (which he hated), and spent his boyhood summers on his grandfather's cattle ranch in eastern Oregon (which he loved). John met his wife Stasi in high school (in drama class). But their romance did not begin until they each came to faith in Christ, after high school. John earned his undergraduate degree in Theater at Cal Poly, and directed a theater company in Los Angeles for several years before moving to Colorado with Focus on the Family, where he taught at the Focus on the Family Institute.

John earned his master's degree in Counseling from Colorado Christian University, under the direction of Larry Crabb and Dan Allender. He worked as a counselor in private practice before launching Ransomed Heart in 2000. John and Stasi live in Colorado Springs with their three sons (Samuel, Blaine and Luke), their golden retriever (Oban), and two horses (Whistle and Kokolo). While all of this is factually true, it somehow misses describing an actual person. He loves the outdoors passionately, and all beauty, Shakespeare, bow hunting, a good cigar, anything having to do with adventure, poetry, March Madness, working in the shop, fly fishing, classic rock, the Tetons, fish tacos, George MacDonald, green tea, buffalo steaks, dark chocolate, wild and open places, horses running, and too much more to name. He also uses the expression "far out" way too much.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

57 of 57 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Areminder or a great introduction., December 19, 2005

By 

Steven R. McEvoy "MCWPP" (Canada) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Ransomed Heart: A Collection of Devotional Readings (Hardcover)

ohn is currently one of the controversial voices in Christianity. Yet not in the way most are; those on the left and those on the right dislike him equally. If you do a Google search on John Eldredge and Wild at Heart, you will get sites praising him as a new voice for Christianity and for men, and just as many condemning him and his writings as heretical. John is best known for his book Wild at Heart, which has been sweeping through churches across North America and the world. On the community forum on his ministry's website, ransomedheart.com/forum/ there are members from around the world.

What is this book about? It is a devotional reader, it has 365 meditations or excerpts from his other writings, The Sacred Romance, Wild At Heart, Waking the Dead, Journey of Desire, Epic and Captivating. This book would be a great primer on John's thought or as a reminder for a fan who has read his works. It's like borrowing a book from a friend who has underlined the best passages and you skim those to get the guts of the book. This is "the guts" of his full progression of thought.

You might ask what is the basic idea of his works? I would say that it is three-fold; first that our hearts are good, second that we need to learn to listen to our hearts, and finally we need to be living from our true hearts or our truest self. Waking The Dead begins with a quote "The Glory of God is man fully alive," Saint Irenaeus. One of the things I like about this book, and all of John's writings, is that he draws from such varied sources; he loves to quote from movies and use movie illustrations, and he draws from a wide range of Christian sources- the desert fathers, Thomas Merton, C.S. Lewis, Chesterton and many, many more.

This book would be great to get a feel for what the controversy is all about, or to keep beside your bed and randomly open each night for a little reminder that your heart is good and that it matters to God.

(First Published in Imprint 2005-10-14 as 'Small Reminders of Faith')

27 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An introduction to Eldridge's practice of "seeing with the eyes of our hearts", November 1, 2005

By 

FaithfulReader.com (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Ransomed Heart: A Collection of Devotional Readings (Hardcover)

"You will not think clearly about your life until you think mythically. Until you see with the eyes of your heart," wrote John Eldredge in his book, WAKING THE DEAD. The words can be read again in his latest book, THE RANSOMED HEART, a collection of devotional readings culled from his many popular titles including WILD AT HEART, THE SACRED ROMANCE, and EPIC.

Helping people to see "with the eyes of their hearts" is a good way to describe Eldredge's mission. As a survey of his work to this point, THE RANSOMED HEART is both a good introduction to Eldredge's take on life and spirituality, and a helpful compendium for those who have already grown to appreciate his thoughts. As this reading from Day 230 articulates, Eldredge advocates a kind of Spirit-enabled empowerment that he hopes will help people more fully engage the world, relationships, and God:

"The deeper reason we fear our own glory is that once we let others see it, they will have seen the truest us, and that is nakedness indeed. We can repent of our sin. We can work on our 'issues.' But there is nothing to be 'done' about our glory. It's so naked. It's just there --- the truest us. It is an awkward thing to shimmer when everyone else around you is not, to walk in your glory with an unveiled face when everyone else is veiling his. For a woman to be truly feminine and beautiful is to invite suspicion, jealousy, misunderstanding. A friend confided in me, 'When you walk into a room, every woman looks at you to see --- are you prettier than they are? Are you a threat?'

And that is why living from your glory is the only loving thing to do. You cannot love another person from a false self. You cannot love another while you are still hiding. You cannot love another unless you offer her your heart. It takes courage to live from your heart. My friend Jenny said just the other day, 'I desperately want to be who I am. I don't want the glory that I marvel at in others anymore. I want to be that glory which God set in me.'

Finally, our deepest fear of all...we will need to live from it. To admit we do have a new heart and a glory from God, to begin to let it be unveiled and embrace it as true --- that means the next thing God will do is ask us to live from it. Come out of the boat. Take the throne. Be what he meant us to be. And that feels risky...really risky. But it is also exciting. It is coming fully alive. My friend Morgan declared, 'It's a risk worth taking.'"

Eldredge has been accused of repeating himself in his books, but this liability becomes an asset in this collection as the themes of the daily devotions compliment each other nicely despite being drawn from several different books. In addition to his collected work, THE RANSOMED HEART also includes three prayers that Eldredge has found helpful in his own personal spiritual life.

But other less-than-positive critiques of his work are still valid, even in this format. Chief among them is that Eldredge's ideas appear to stem from a heavy diet of movies and canoeing more than from Scripture itself. His ideas seem to be shaped more by Braveheart than the Bible. And indeed, his references to "supporting" Scripture are often taken wildly out of context.

Additionally, his vision of what it means to be masculine is largely informed by his own love of the outdoors and adventure sports like rappelling. Those with more sedentary passions are virtually ignored. Similarly, his discussion about beauty and femininity (drawn from CAPTIVATING, the book he co-authored with his wife, Stasi) seems to be rooted in a very specific experience of loving (and being) a beautiful woman. Those with other experiences might find little that speaks to their own lives.

Having said that, Braveheart is a great movie. And what Eldredge has to say isn't heretical, even if it is just one person's vision of what constitutes a well-lived life. Indeed, as millions of readers can attest, Eldredge's vision --- the value he places on relationships and living with a fearless generosity --- can be inspiring and regenerative.


--- Reviewed by Lisa Ann Cockrel

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Ransomed Heart, March 8, 2007

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Elizabeth J. Marker "Lizard" (Los Alamos, NM) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Ransomed Heart: A Collection of Devotional Readings (Hardcover)

This has made a profound change in my life. I ask God to give me his daily blessing of a reading and open the book at random pages and read.
It hits home on what happens that day to me and the message becomes clearer. If we listen, he will talk to us and bless us.