Get Your Life Back: Everyday Practices for a World Gone Mad

by John Eldredge

The desert fathers of the third and fourth century were a courageous, ragtag group, followers of Jesus who fled the madness of their world to seek a life of beauty and simplicity with God in the silent desert. For they saw the world as “a shipwreck from which every man has to swim for their life.”2 And think of it: they had no cell phones, no Internet, no media per se, not one automobile, Starbucks, or leaf blower. The news that came their way was local; they did not carry the burdens of every community in the world. They walked everywhere they went. Therefore, they lived at the pace of three miles an hour (!). Yet they felt the world sucking the life out of them, and they decided to do something about it.

Jesus models a freedom of heart I think every one of us would love to have. His ability to disengage himself from his world is so alluring.

Beauty heals, partly because it proclaims that there is goodness in the world and that goodness prevails, or is preserved, or will somehow outlast all harm and darkness.

But the staggering presence of tens of thousands of tall, thriving evergreens in dense profusion fills the soul with memories of Eden, visions that speak messages. “Beautiful things, as Matisse shows, always carry greetings from other worlds within them.”5 The Christian understands those greetings to come from the kingdom of God itself.

The key is this: the rooted person is able to meditate—give sustained attention to—the revelation of God. Not swipe, not multitask. Lingering focus. So Crawford wonders, “As our mental lives become more fragmented, what is at stake often seems to be nothing less than the question of whether one can maintain a coherent self. I mean a self that is able to act according to settled purposes and ongoing projects, rather than flitting about.”

Yeah, me too. Let’s be honest: we prefer distraction. The more distracted we are, the less present we are to our souls’ various hurts, needs, disappointments, boredom, and fears. It’s a short-term relief with long-term consequences. What blows my mind is how totally normal this has become; it’s the new socially acceptable addiction. I’ve got a friend who decided to break with his; he now turns his phone off over the weekend. I text him, and he doesn’t reply until Sunday night or Monday morning. I’m embarrassed by my irritation: C’mon, man—you know the protocol. Everybody agrees to be totally available, anywhere, anytime, 24/7. It’s what we do. What does it say that you look like some sort of nut job when you turn your phone off? The brother of Jesus was trying to offer some very simple guidelines to a true life with God when, among other things, he said, “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world” (James 1:27). That unpolluted part—that’s what worries me, when the average American checks their phone eighty times a day (!), and 70 percent said they sleep with their phone within reach.

The ongoing deluge of intriguing facts and commentary, scandal and crisis, genuinely important guidance combined with the latest insider news from around the globe, and our friends’ personal lives gives the soul a medicated feeling of awareness, connection, and meaning. Really, it’s the new Tower of Babel—the immediate access to every form of “knowledge” and “groundbreaking” information right there on our phones, every waking moment. It confuses the soul into a state of artificial meaning and purpose, all the while preventing genuine soul care and life with God. Who has time to read a book? Plant a garden?

Sincere followers of Jesus in every age have faced very difficult decisions—usually at that point of tension where their life with and for God ran straight against the prevailing cultural norm. The new Tower of Babel is ours. We have always been “strangers and aliens” in the world, insofar as our values seemed so strange and bizarre to those around us. We are now faced with a series of decisions that are going to make us look like freaks—choices like fasting from social media, never bringing our smartphones to any meal, conversation, or Bible study, cutting off our media intake so we can practice stillness every day. The good news is that we actually have a choice. Unlike persecution, the things currently assaulting us are things we can choose not to participate in.

You don’t need to know about the snowstorm in Ohio or the embarrassing thing the president just said.

Turn your phone off at 8:00 p.m. Give yourself some evening time for real things. And banish all technology from your bedroom.

Don’t check your phone as soon as you wake up in the morning. Give your soul mercy to wake up; enjoy a few peaceful moments.

When your phone chirps or vibrates, don’t react. Make it wait till you pick it up. In these small ways I’m making my phone a tool again, something that ...

Do real t...

The incessant upgrade of everything. Always pushing the boundaries. Extreme this, extreme that.

It sets up an unspoken set of expectations in our hearts that, unless your life is YouTube-worthy, your life is stupid. It’s boring. (Why else would anxiety and depression—and envy—rise in direct proportion to one’s consumption of social media? Because we’re comparing our lives to what’s online.) Creeping in is the message that if your life is going to measure up and be wonderful, it has to be fantastic. Men used to get on bended knee to propose to their beloved; nowadays you’re a loser unless you do it skydiving or kayaking over waterfalls.

Now church services compete with concert-level staging, lighting, special effects, and films. The terrible, unspoken assumption creeping in is this: if you’re going to find God, if you’re going to have more of God, it’s going to come through some amazing experience, something totally wild and over the top. Or we think that once we have God, the proof will be an over-the-top life. Not true. So unhelpful, and immensely unkind.

Reminding yourself that God is the one who brought into existence the very things you love is a wonderful reminder to your soul of the intimacy between God’s heart and yours. You love the same things! Did you know that? Close friends love the same things; lovers love the same things. Go on and think of something else that delights your heart—laughter, beauty, your favorite things in nature, a childhood fairytale. Beginning with the things we love is the way back toward God.

Notice that the older brother can’t receive the father’s generosity; he’s closed off, curtained off, by his attention to Self. This is the hidden danger I spoke of: the stubborn life of the Self. The Exalted Me, unsubmitted and unsurrendered to the rule of Christ in me.

That is not how God feels about your humanity. Why would your Father say things like he will give you the desires of your heart, and please protect your heart because it is the spring of life in you, if what he wanted you to do was kill your desires and dreams?5 In the chapter on kindness we saw that Jesus never said we’re supposed to hate ourselves, for how can we love our neighbor as ourselves if we hate ourselves? (The way you treat your heart is the way you will treat everyone else’s.) Jesus always handled broken and misguided people graciously and with a view toward their restoration. The Incarnation itself ought to remove every doubt that God loves and cherishes your humanity, because he took on humanity himself in order to redeem yours. Your personhood is not the problem; the issue is who is at the helm? What is fueling and motivating your faculties? Who gets to drive the bus?

For the Self was never meant to be master, and when we make it so, we fall prey to a thousand heartaches. Countless pressures, to begin with, because life is now up to us; we are masters of our own destiny, and that’s a crushing load. Fear and anxiety soon follow, because we’re on our own and we know we can’t control the future, not even the next five minutes. The soul shakes and collapses under the weight of it all. We harbor unforgiveness, resentment, and injured pride, because we just can’t let go of our memories of injustices we’ve suffered. My rights, my wrongs. Benevolent detachment is nearly impossible for the exalted Self; it’s way too caught up in all the drama. Anger and rage are the usual reactions of the thwarted Self, because we’re being denied. Depression often results when the Self is continually thwarted.

Jesus, I surrender the Self Life to you. I’m not hating the Self; I’m not mocking it. I’m not berating the Self, not heaping accusation and contempt upon it. I am surrendering it, turning it over to Jesus, relinquishing its every right.

Pray for people who are in a better situation than you are, who are more gifted than you are, or who currently have wonderful circumstances coming their way. Rejoice with those who rejoice. Pray for someone else’s promotion, someone else’s pregnancy, someone else’s healing. That crucifies envy.

We are seeking a greater measure of God in us, and so we must remind ourselves that Jesus is already here, inside us. “This is the secret: Christ lives in you” (Colossians 1:27 nlt). We’re not asking a distant and remote Jesus to stop what he’s doing and travel across galaxies or even the planet to meet our request. He’s already here; the resources you seek are already implanted within you, making it easier for him to rise up in greater measure within you.

A beautiful writer and teacher whom I greatly respect said to a group of sincere disciples one day, “God never gives anyone more than they can handle.” With all due respect, I have to say while that is a lovely and comforting thought, it simply isn’t true. God is committed that his sons and daughters learn how to live a supernatural life, drawn from supernatural resources. How will he teach us to do that? He will put us in circumstances that are far beyond our natural capabilities. Dear friends, he will put you in circumstances that look a heck of a lot like your life right now.

Thank you for this beauty, Father. I receive it into my soul. I receive this gift and through it your love, your goodness, your life.

I now bring the authority, rule, and dominion of the Lord Jesus Christ and the full work of Christ over my life today: over my home, my household, my work, over all my kingdom and domain. I bring the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ and the full work of Christ against every evil power coming against me—against every foul spirit, every foul power and device. [You might need to name them—what has been attacking you?] I cut them off in the name of the Lord; I bind and banish them from me and from my kingdom now, in the mighty name of Jesus Christ. I also bring the full work of Christ between me and every person, and I allow only the love of God and only the Spirit of God between us.