I received a free copy of the new revised and expanded version of ‘Wild At Heart’ by John Eldredge in exchange for this review of the book.
I read the original several years ago and really enjoyed it. I learned a lot in my first reading, but in my second I realized that I was in need of reading it again. I don’t typically re-read books, but this has encouraged me to consider multiple readings of other books as well.
When I first read this book, I was either a very new dad or almost there. I read it the first time thinking a lot about what I could do right as a father to my son. This time, I read it more for myself. The premise of the book is,
“In the heart of every man is a desperate desire for a battle to fight, an adventure to live, and a beauty to rescue.”
This being said, the problem is that we have lost our heart. We don’t think that we are capable of such things. We buy into the lie that we aren’t good enough and we settle for mediocrity. We suppress the desires of our hearts to fit into a system of lies that tells us what to do. We stop fighting, adventuring, and pursuing and we just try to get by.
Eldredge lays out a strategy for reclaiming our heart so that we can fight our battles, live our adventures, and rescue the beauty. First we must discover our wound. This can be painful to revisit. We must go back into our wound and invite God to go there with us to begin the healing process. This is no easy overnight solution. It takes time to work through. He also addresses the issues with spiritual warfare and how the enemy strategically tries to keep us busy and distracted from becoming who God created us to be.
I very much enjoyed the new edition and would recommend this to anyone who is raising boys. He also takes into account that women may read this book and addresses much of the same from a women’s perspective. But for more of that, I would recommend the book he wrote with his wife called ‘Captivating’.