Walking with God by John Eldredge

Eldredge, John. Walking with God. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2008.

Walking with God is a book for Christians who want, really need, an intimate relationship with God. This is not an abstract walk, but real, daily communication with the real, living God in which we not only send up our prayers, but in which He talks to us.


This is not a how-to book. It is a series of stories, incidents and anecdotes from about a year of Eldredge’s life that are meant to illustrate what it is like to walk with God.

It’s not easy. The Christian who desires to abide in Christ will find many things that come against him. Much of it is just facing the tiring trials of being an imperfect human in a fallen world. It is also difficult be cause we have an enemy who’ll do everything he can to prevent us from having the relationship to which God is calling us. The vignettes of walking with God are also pictures of spiritual warfare.

At the beginning of the book, Eldredge breaks from the memoir format to make the case that God still talks to his people personally. It’s not a theological dissertation, but it is an argument from the Bible that makes that case that God does want to relate to us intimately and communicate to us directly. This in no way diminishes the role of the Bible, but goes hand and hand. The book presents the case that revelation and wisdom are needed to effectively hear from God.

In some of his other books, Eldredge talks about people being wounded and are in need of healing that only God can provide. In those books, he writes about inviting Jesus into those wounds, into those parts of our live and experiences where we’ve been hurt. I found it to be like getting a diagnosis without getting prescription. That may be unfair to his other books, but I thought Walking with God does a much better job of showing what it is like to bring Christ’s healing and redemptive power into the hurts of life.

Other books by John Eldredge:
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