A Short Summary of
The Sacred Romance
by Brent Curtis and John Eldredge
 
 
"Loss of heart" is common in our day but how does this come about?   Since we were young, there has been an "unknown romancing" within us, a longing for adventure that requires something of us and the desire for intimacy.  At the same time, we experience "the arrows" of life, a loss we experience as abandonment or some deep violation we feel as abuse.  There seems to be no direct correlation between the way we live our lives and the resulting fate God has in store for us.  In order to participate or merely survive, we will find some story to live in: the tragedy, the survivor, the sports story, the religious person. 

But the real story begins with the hero in love.  We long for intimacy because we are made in the image of perfect intimacy.  God also made us free and, at the point of our deepest betrayal, God came and died to rescue us.  We are God's Sought After (Isa 62:4,12) and his lovers in the wedding feast of the Lamb (Rev 19). 

Satan's tactic is to sneak in as Storyteller with smaller stories constructed along the plotlines of control and gratification.  We also choose the less-wild lovers of competence and order or indulgence

There needs to be a twofold turning in our lives: a turning away from attachment (our smaller stories and less-wild lovers) and a turning toward desire.  The spiritual disciplines of silence, solitude, meditation (heart prayer), fasting and simplicity practiced by Christ bring us through the emptiness and thirst into the presence of God.  Replace the notion that our earthly existence is "as good as it gets" with a focus on the intimacy, beauty and adventure of heaven.  Have your heart burning with desire within you and have the patience to enjoy what there is now to enjoy.  Remember both the essential truths and dramatic narrative of the Sacred Romance because it interprets the rest of our existence.