Resilient: Restoring Your Weary Soul in These Turbulent Times

by John Eldredge

The longing for things to be good again is one of the deepest yearnings of the human heart. It has slumbered in the depths of our souls ever since we lost our true home. For our hearts remember Eden.

It is a story about the Primal Drive for Life—where will we take our thirst? This is the choice, the test. Always has been, always will be. This Primal Drive for Life was so compelling it caused thousands of those rescued slaves to mount a rebellion to go back to bondage in Egypt just to have their familiar ways back. Sobering. “The heavens are shocked at such a thing and shrink back in horror and dismay,” says the LORD. “For my people have done two evil things: They have abandoned me—the fountain of living water. And they have dug for themselves cracked cisterns that can hold no water at all!” JEREMIAH 2:12–13 NLT

What is available is the River of Life, God himself, in ways we have not yet tapped into.

“Where the river flows everything will live” (Ezekiel 47:9). Everything will live. This is what we want—to live, to find life in its fullness again.

“Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them” (John 7:37–38).

resilience is also something that is bestowed, something imparted by God

Resilience is bestowed upon us by being adored and by experiencing our deep hunger satisfied with overwhelming abundance.

“Every addiction is a misplaced prayer.”

The God of the open ocean dwells inside of me. His power is mine to draw upon.

“descend with the mind into the heart,” I think by our “mind” he was referring to our conscious attention, and by “heart” he meant our inmost being, the Depths. The psalmist cried out to God from his innermost being; he then gave the fullness of his attention to God: Out of the depths I cry to you, LORD; Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive to my cry for mercy. . . . I wait for the LORD, my whole being waits . . . I wait for the LORD more than watchmen wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning. (Psalm 130:1–2, 5–6) Watchmen scan the horizon with careful attention, for their lives and the lives of the people within the city they protect depend on their attentiveness. The psalmist is using an analogy from his world to talk about undistracted focus: looking for God with all your attentiveness.

Finding God always begins with loving him.

We are aiming for release, turning over into the hands of God whatever is burdening us and leaving it there.

The soul was never meant to inhabit a world like this.

God made us: invented us as a man invents an engine. . . . Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on.2

“Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own” (Matthew 6:34). “Do not worry” is a command, not a suggestion.

I bring my emotional life under the rule of Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ alone. I refuse to let this world get me spun up. I refuse to let it make me fearful or angry. I refuse to take the bait. When I need to grieve, Lord, I grieve in you. When I need to get mad, I get mad in you.

Father, Jesus, Holy Spirit, I receive your Glory into my being. I receive the Glory that fills the oceans, the Glory that sustains the sun.