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Walking with God

Guided or misguided?

WALKING WITH GOD
Talk to him. Hear from him. Really.
By John Eldredge
Thomas Nelson. 220 pages. £7.99
ISBN 978-1-40028-005-6

Does God speak to you? Not through the Bible that is, but directly. If not, it will spiritually ‘handicap the rest of your life’, according to bestselling author John Eldredge, who claims that such ‘conversational intimacy’ with God is not only available but is meant to be normal. In Walking with God he opens his journals so others can learn from his experiences recorded over the course of a year.

The few pages spent trying to justify his position biblically take texts out of context and work on the simplistic assumption that if God spoke directly to the likes of Abraham and Moses then he must speak to us in the same way today. If Eldredge’s handling of Scripture is unconvincing, so are the numerous trivial, and at times pathetic, examples he shares. ‘Jesus, shall we fish? I hear, Fish.’ On one occasion he asks God if he should go horse riding, gets a ‘yes’, goes, falls off and ends up in hospital. What went wrong? Apparently he failed to ask God where he should ride!

Walking with God is also, for Eldredge, a matter of daily warfare with evil spirits, some of which is so sensational that even he concedes, ‘I fear you’re going to think I’m nuts’. Everyday warfare for him involves banishing foul spirits of lust and despair, and he and his wife cannot get to sleep at night without 20 minutes of prayer to cleanse the house of demonic forces. His journals tells stories of objects brought into the home bringing foul spirits with them, and oppression transferring from one person to another like a virus.

I was challenged by Eldredge’s passion for a deeper, closer relationship with God, his honesty about his own failings, and his commitment to dealing with the deep things of the heart — but I think he is misguided about what walking with God actually looks like and I would only recommend this book to pastors who want to help those who may have been influenced by such teaching.

Marcus Nodder,
senior pastor, St Peter’s Barge, Canary Wharf, London’s Floating Church
http://www.stpetersbarge.org